


Binary Star

by theputterer



Series: assorted nonsense timestamps [8]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Brother-Sister Relationships, Depression, F/F, F/M, Family Dynamics, Family Issues, Flashbacks, Gen, Lesbians in Space, Mental Health Issues, Nonsense Compliant, Parent-Child Relationship, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-15 03:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13604157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theputterer/pseuds/theputterer
Summary: The First Order and Resistance are locked in a war spanning the galaxy. Sides have been taken, lines have been drawn. The New Republic goes up in flames. The Last Jedi has been called. The future of the entire galaxy is at stake.In the grand scheme of things, the fractured relationship between a brother and sister is not an issue with cosmic consequences.But that is really only the case if you are neither the brother nor the sister.[Or: the Fima and Ersa Andor TFA/TLJ story.]





	1. why does tragedy exist?

_Binary star (n.) :_

_a system of two stars in which one star revolves around the other,_

_or both revolve around a common center._

 

**_34 ABY_ **

The Ring of Kafrene is the epitome of a halfway place.

Though the main roads of the colony don’t change, and are somewhat logically laid out, the shacks and haphazard settlements that litter the outskirts beyond these main roads change on the daily. Every structure seems to be made of metal or plastic, and he doesn’t know why or where it’s coming from exactly, but the air is thick with the smell of ammonia.

Fima is categorically unimpressed.

He would regret coming here, save for the undeniable fact that in addition to being an abandoned mining colony, the Ring of Kafrene is a trading post, a stop for wayward and weary travelers, and therefore filled with a plethora of aliens and humans from all walks of life. Fima has been stationed on the Ring for four months, and managed to recruit three dozen spies and informants for the Resistance during that time. Not too shabby, considering recruitment is far from being his forte; he’s always been more of a behind the scenes kind of person.

But it’s finally his last day here, and he’s very ready to leave.

He leans against the doorway of the sad shack he’s been working out of, and watches the hustle and bustle of the street outside. The shack does not belong to him, nor the Resistance; it was a place he’d spent his first week on the Ring observing, until he was certain it’d been abandoned. He doesn’t sleep in it--he sleeps in the ship he flew to the Ring--but it’s useful as a meet-up place between him and potential recruits.

Fima cannot advertise his status as a Resistance operative, and so he spends his mornings out and about in the Ring, visiting dingy cafes and miserable smoke shops, making small talk with the people he encounters. He thinks he’s gotten pretty good at guessing who might be sympathetic to the Resistance just based off of appearance; his first few attempts were disastrous, resulting in him running through the streets of the Ring in an effort to lose his assailants, all of whom were eager to turn a Resistance agent in to the First Order.

Again; this is not work he is prone to do, and probably work he  _ shouldn’t _ do. But the General is determined to add numbers to their ranks, and has it in her head that Fima might be able to employ some kind of charm, what with his natural ability to see things in a positive, and hopeful, light… 

But Fima is also pragmatic, which is how he narrowed down on another benefit of using the shack as a meet-up place; if the location of the shack is revealed to the First Order, he still has a place to go.

So far, he hasn’t had to abandon the shack.

He watches the street, his status as a casual loiterer made fact by the cigarette in his hand; he looks like any other worker taking a smoke break in the middle of the day, passing the time by observing the busy street. Fima is not a regular smoker in any sense, but he’ll do it if he thinks it might help his cover, such as by helping him blend in here on the Ring of Kafrene.

Even if he was interested in smoking cigarettes recreationally; imagining the look on his mother’s face should she ever catch him would immediately put an end to that habit.

He stills when he sees a woman walking towards him.

She’s older than him by at least ten years (it doesn’t really matter, he isn’t going to ask) with a completely shaved head and skin so pale it reflects light. Her eyes are violet, the result of some kind of cosmetic procedure, and her teeth are pearly white and sharp. She’s scanning the buildings she passes, until her eyes land on the shack, and Fima, hovering in the doorway.

He lifts a hand in greeting.

The woman smiles, and strides to stand in front of him.

“Galen,” she greets.

“Isold,” he returns. “Come on in.”

She follows him inside the shack, expression turning disgusted.

“The Resistance could spring for something a bit more inhabitable,” she notes, looking around the grimy and largely empty space.

“Not for their recruitment agents,” Fima says. He directs Isold to the table and two chairs in the middle of the room, pulling the chair out for her. She sits with an air of distaste, nails (each at least two inches long) drumming against the wooden tabletop.

“I still haven’t decided,” she says, without any preamble.

Fima sits in front of her. “That’s fine. Do you have any questions for me?”

“Would I be expected to report in a certain number of times?”

“No,” Fima replies. “Only as often as you’d like; we don’t set specific dates for reports, or a certain number of reports. Only when you have information to share.”

She winks. “So I can’t say hi?”

He knows she’s teasing him, perhaps trying to make him uncomfortable, but he rolls with it. “You can if you’d like. I’m sure our contact staff would be thrilled.”

She laughs, and he allows himself a small moment of victory.

She likes him; this is key in getting someone to become an informant for the Resistance.

Fima likes to think he is likeable, is easy to get along with, but he knows he works best with people he has a lot in common with. And Isold is not someone he can relate to on any level.

“Would anyone bother me if I stopped reporting in?” she asks.

“If we haven’t heard from you in ten months, someone will try to check in with you,” Fima says. “Mostly to see if you’ve decided to switch allegiances, and work for the First Order instead. We’d blacklist you from our communications. But if you decided to simply stop helping us, we’d leave you be.”

“Seems a little too nice.”

“That’s kind of the point; we aren’t the First Order.”

“Indeed,” she muses. “Now; what about payment? The First Order pays for information, you know.”

“I do know,” Fima says. “Is knowing you’re helping the good guys not enough?”

She laughs at that, as he knew she would, and he smiles.

“We do pay,” he says. “Probably not as much as the First Order. But we pay.”

“Lesser pay, but the knowledge I’m working for the good guys.”

“If you’d like to think of it as  _ doing the right thing, _ that works too.”

She smirks, looking around the miserable room, before suddenly turning back to him.

“How old are you, kid?”

He doesn’t really see the harm in being honest: “Twenty-four.”

“Kriff. How long have you been with the Resistance?”

He thinks of reading about the exodus of cadets at New Republic Military academies across the galaxy, thinks about hearing the rumors that Leia Organa was looking for soldiers for an underground resistance movement against the burgeoning First Order, thinks about getting in touch with her, thinks about Leia Organa herself turning up at his parents’ house on Fest.

He thinks about packing a bag, and leaving that house.

“Since the beginning,” he tells Isold.

Isold stares at him. “And this is still what you want to do?”

_ “You must remember why you’re there. Why you’re fighting. It must always be a conscious choice, Fima. It must be your choice. Not because it’s simply the right thing to do, but because it’s the thing you want to do. This is very, very important.” _

“Yes,” he says, simply.

Isold sighs.

“Fine,” she says. “I’ll see what I can do to help. I’m only a freelancer for the First Order, you know. The contracts come and go.”

“We’re very grateful for your help.”

“I bet,” she says, dryly.

 

* * *

 

D’Qar looks exactly the same as it did when he left it.

He hadn’t really expected it to look different, but it’s still a bit of a relief. After four months in the Ring of Kafrene, the sight of tall trees and green grass and fresh air is a very welcome thing indeed.

He lands his shabby transport on the small airfield, and makes his way into the base.

It’s busy, as always, the space covered in various tech, droids whistling around his feet as he walks through the rooms. Thick vines and roots crawl down the walls of the base, somewhat off-setting the smell of oil and fuel that would otherwise dominate everything. Oil and fuel is almost a step up from the ammonia he’s been inhaling for the last four months.

He pauses, scanning the room for his superior for debriefing.

“Andor.”

He turns his head.

Leia Organa is very short, which he thinks is why he failed to spot her through the weaving crowds. She’s leaning against a table covered with various pieces of a starfighter, arms crossed over her chest, eyeing him with a raised brow.

“General,” he says, walking to her side.

She looks him up and down. “Glad to have you back in one piece.”

“Did you not think I would be, General?”

“The Ring of Kafrene is a seedy place,” she notes, and Fima can’t help but be impressed that she’s aware of where he’s been the last four months.

It occurs to him why this might be.

“My mother didn’t call, did she?”

“Only once or twice,” General Organa says, smirking.

“I’m sorry,” Fima says, with a groan.

“Don’t be,” she says, dismissively. “I’ve known your mother for… Kriff. Thirty-four years. I’m aware of how to appease her. Besides; mothers worry.” She pauses, a shadow passing over her face, and Fima fights the urge to fidget uncomfortably.

“But you should call her,” General Organa finishes.

“I will,” Fima promises. “Right after debriefing.”

She nods. “Good.”

He turns to go, but General Organa’s voice calls after him.

“It’s good to have you back, Captain Andor.”

He turns back around. She’s smiling, amusement wrinkling her eyes, making her look like the young Rebel Alliance hero she once was.

“I didn’t volunteer for the recruitment work,” he reminds her. “I’ve, uh, said before that I prefer to work here.”

She nods. “I like having you here.”

This is very high praise.

He gives her a small smile before continuing on his way.

 

* * *

 

Debriefing doesn’t take as long as he thought it would, but he guesses it helps he’s been diligent in sending reports back to base, so there isn’t much new information for him to pass on.

He walks down the hall with the goal of finding something to eat, when he catches sight of a tall woman with thick black hair cascading down her back in a sea of tight braids that brush her waist. Her back is to him, but when she turns her head, he sees skin as black as the midnight sky, and eyes an almost neon shade of light blue.

“Nyota,” he calls.

She turns around, looking through the sea of people, and then her eyes land on Fima.

She beams.

She all but runs across the room, throwing herself into Fima’s arms, wrapping him up in an enthusiastic hug. 

“Fima,” Nyota gushes. “Oh, it’s so good to see you. We were starting to get worried.”

“It’s been a while,” Fima agrees, gently moving Nyota back so he can look at her, a thing made easier by the simple fact that they’re the same height.

There’s a bruise blossoming on her chin, and a cut over her left eyebrow.

“What happened?” he asks.

“This is going to alarm you, but as it turns out, there are some _very_ _rude_ men out there,” Nyota says.

“Uh huh,” Fima says. “Who started it?”

Nyota blinks, all big blue eyes. “Oh, you know--”

“My sister, huh?”

Nyota shrugs. “Like I said:  _ rude _ men. Neither of us have a lot of patience for them.”

“My sister doesn’t have a lot of patience, period,” Fima mutters.

“She’s stressed, and worried,” Nyota says, kindly.

“Where is she?”

“Where do you think?”

That’s probably fair.

He nods, and goes to leave, when Nyota’s hand shoots out, and grabs his arm. He turns back to her.

“It isn’t a good day,” Nyota says, quietly. “She’s… She’s a little sad, today.”

Fima sighs, but finds he isn’t surprised.

“Got it,” he says.

“Good luck,” Nyota returns.

He walks away.

 

* * *

 

All of the Resistance’s equipment and tech is, to put it charitably, old-fashioned.

To put it less charitably: it’s junk.

There is only so much the Resistance can do as an independent organization, only so much it can do with its limited funds, and so it scrounges up tech and equipment wherever it can, in the hope that someone on base can repair it, or make it into something salvagble.

Fima’s sister is one such person.

He finds her in her favorite of the tech repair rooms, the one with the biggest windows, the wild jungles of D’Qar just outside. It takes him a moment to spot her amidst the various bits of metal and plastic that crowd the room, and the fact the room is dominated by a huge hulking piece of what Fima guesses is a satellite, but probably is something else entirely.

The piece is carefully hoisted in the air a foot or so, and there are a pair of legs sticking out at the bottom.

“Need a hand?” he asks.

The legs freeze.

Carefully, they wheel themselves out from under the satellite.

Ersa is eighteen years old, but with the grease smudges on her cheeks, she looks like a little girl. Her hair brushes her shoulders, all dark brown curls and bangs, falling into her eyes. She gets to her feet, wiping her hands with a rag, frowning up at Fima, who is a good half-foot taller than her.

“When did you get back?” she asks.

“An hour ago or so,” he says. “What about you?”

“This morning.”

“Ah. Yeah. I ran into Nyota.”

Ersa nods, and steps past him, dropping the wrench she’d been using into a toolbox, and procuring a screwdriver. She glances at him one more time before sliding back to the floor, and crawling under the satellite.

“What are you working on?” Fima asks.

“Hyperwave signal interceptor,” Ersa replies, her voice a muffled grunt. “It’s a sensor that’ll pick up fluctuations in local hyperspace indicative of starships entering or exiting the area. Can’t tell where they come from or where they’re going, but it can pick up mass and speed, which should give us a pretty good clue of their allegiance, in case the First Order comes knocking.”

Ersa, Fima thinks, is  _ wasted _ in the Resistance.

She’s a natural engineer, tinkering with and taking apart droids and scanners and projectors since she was little. He remembers her interest in science and engineering growing when he enrolled at the University of Coruscant, when she got to tour the campus and see the labs and workshops there. He was already in the Resistance when she turned sixteen, of age on Fest, and took up an apprenticeship at a tech repair shop in Fulcra.

She could have gone to a university, but she decided to learn a  _ practical  _ trade, rather than exploring her ideas and theories with skilled professors and inventors.

And then she turned seventeen, and joined the Resistance.

Fima joined when he was eighteen, when the Resistance was just getting started, and Leia Organa was looking for recruits. She took him on with enthusiasm, and he got his parents to come around on his decision, backed by the simple fact he was of age on every system. 

But the Resistance is starved for recruits; and so, a year after Fima joined, they made it official policy that seventeen-year-olds could join, as long as they were already of age on their homeworld. It was a kind of compromise, Fima thinks. Leia and the other Resistance leaders could have chosen to take on anyone who was of age on their homeworld, but they set seventeen for the youngest accepted recruit.

(Sometimes, Fima thinks it was Leia who insisted on this loophole, and sometimes he thinks she did because of Ersa, because she’d already stolen one child from his parents, and knew the younger would be coming to her soon, and so when the Resistance leadership insisted on lowering their minimum age requirement, Leia pushed back, to give Fima and Ersa’s parents one more year with their daughter.)

(Fima is certain his parents do not believe this was enough, but it was a compromise.)

He watches his sister now.

Ersa still manages to be innovative, but she’s running solely on her own instincts, the basic repair lessons from her apprenticeship, and the workbooks she’d practically inhale.

But Ersa should be pushing the boundaries of engineering, and inventing things that will make life easier and better for a new generation.

Instead, she’s in a miserable excuse of a tech repair room, working on tech that is over thirty years old, outdated and barely functioning.

The Resistance is grateful for her, for her knowledge and work, but if Fima thinks about it too much, it just makes him sad. Ersa deserves more.

“Sounds… helpful,” is what he says, rather than voicing any of that.

He knows it’ll only piss her off, that she’ll remind him she made a choice to come here and sign up with the Resistance, that it’s what she wants to be doing. And he knows she’s being honest when she says that.

But  _ still. _

She slides back out from under the signal interceptor, eyeing Fima as she stands.

“How was your recruiting?”

“Who told you I was recruiting?”

“Mama. Speaking of which, did you call her back yet?”

“The recruiting was fine,” Fima mutters, and Ersa cracks a dimpled grin. “Not really my thing though. I’m hoping General Organa puts me back in my old post.”

Ersa snorts. “You, enjoying working for High Command?  _ There’s _ a surprise.”

He shrugs. He’s been in the Resistance since Leia Organa founded the organization, and so he’s been working with her and the other leaders the whole time, more or less. Save for when Leia sends him on a reconnaissance trip in Hutt Space. Or on a recruiting assignment in the Outer Rim.

He thinks he knows why she keeps giving him work like this.

He thinks she’s trying to make sure he knows how every aspect of the Resistance is run, because she’s trying to prepare her younger and most trusted officers for roles in High Command, leadership roles they can take on, one day, on their own.

When Leia Organa is gone.

It’s unfathomable, the idea that Leia Organa will not be around, at some point, to lead the Resistance. She’s been fighting in some war for most of her life, been working in politics even longer, and Fima doesn’t know how any rebellion group could survive without her. But it’s the future; and one that will, sooner rather than later, come to pass.

“Is Poe around?” Fima asks, following this train of thought.

Both he and Ersa are fairly close to Poe; their parents are all good friends, and while Fima and Poe are eight years apart, Poe has always been kind and enthusiastic, and willing to indulge Fima by playing various games with him during their childhoods. Poe joined the Resistance at the same time Fima did, the two of them both growing up knowing Leia Organa and eager to help her cause, and the first half-year or so of the Resistance saw Poe taking Fima under his wing (somewhat literally, with the flying lessons) and introducing him to all his friends from the Academy, and passing on the lessons he learned there.

And of course Poe is also fond of Ersa, even though they’re fourteen years apart; Fima imagines Ersa is a bit like the baby sister Poe never got to have.

“He’s just gotten back from that skirmish on Takodana,” Ersa says, fiddling with the toolkit in front of her, and Fima has no idea what the skirmish on Takodana was about. He’d ask Ersa, but going by her stiff shoulders and generally aloof voice, she would skim the details.

“Huh. Do you know what you’re doing next?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

Fima rolls his eyes. “I haven’t formally been assigned back to ground force operations.”

“We’ll see,” Ersa says. “I should get back to work.”

“Do you want to meet me in the mess hall for dinner later?”

Ersa’s lips twist. “I dunno. I have a lot to do.”

Fima decides to stop beating around the bush, and speak plainly.

“Nyota said it’s a bad day for you.”

She looks at him, but doesn’t deny it, doesn’t try to lie. “Yep.”

“Want to… Want to talk about it?”

Fima has never quite been able to understand it.

The melancholia.

He knows it’s a mental illness Ersa inherited from their father, who inherited it from his mother. It’s a disease of lifelong, chronic despair. It manifests with additional symptoms of paranoia, agitation, rage, self-hatred, and cynicism. It can also cause insomnia, and overwhelming feelings of guilt.

Ersa frequently displays these symptoms. He tries to help, by making himself available for her to talk to, encouraging her to be honest about her sadness, that he will never shame her for it. He’s spent his whole life treating his father in this way; he’s a bit of a pro, now.

But Ersa; she’s still learning the parameters of her mental illness.

And there’s another thing too, a wedge between her and Fima.

Melancholia is genetic, but it’s also catalyzed by something. Some people with the gene never experience the full brunt of the illness, because they don’t go through a trauma that sets it off. The catalyst can be a death of a loved one, or a loss of livelihood, or a loss of home. Or a familial separation.

They never talk about it, but they know Ersa’s melancholia was set off when she was twelve.

When Fima left home to join the Resistance.

It was watching her brother go with Leia Organa, leaving Ersa with the undeniable truth that she might never see him again.

Her personality changed. His little sister, all cheerfulness and enthusiasm, became someone pessimistic and perpetually sorrowful. Their father took her to a psychiatrist, and encouraged her to share her feelings with him, as he was the only one in the family who could understand her entirely.

But she didn’t do it. Their father told Fima that she did go to the psychiatrist, and did learn how to deal with the melancholia, but she wouldn’t talk to him about it. He didn’t know why this was, but decided to follow Ersa’s wishes, and made himself available if she decided to talk to him.

She didn’t.

In a fit of irony, Ersa has become closest to her mother. Fima guesses this isn’t that unexpected; if anyone has experience dealing with someone with melancholia, it’s their mother, who’s spent decades learning how to best respond to their father’s sadness. Now while Ersa rarely talks to their father, she always responds to their mother’s calls, casually chatting with her, and never bringing up her emotions.

Fima has always had a more difficult relationship with his mother, primarily because they’re too alike. He finds it hard to talk to her, to be honest with her; mostly, he’s worried he’ll call her, and she’ll see his face, and know everything he’s feeling.

The guilt, the fear, the anger.

He talks to his father, instead.

And Fima and Ersa don’t talk at all.

Even now, as they are very far away from home, away from their parents; they’re distant. Ersa’s personality was changed with the melancholia, and in a lot of ways, Fima feels like he needs to be reintroduced to her.

For five years he rarely saw her, as he was too caught up in the Resistance and the Cold War, and then Ersa turned up on D’Qar, a seventeen-year-old girl with a steel glint in her eye and a furious urge to rip, and tear, and destroy. A fearless kind of warrior with a talent for engineering, and an unyielding drive to work. And Fima realized the twelve-year-old sister he left on Fest had changed. 

He’s surprised their parents let her enlist in the Resistance, but he knows Ersa would have simply run away from home if they’d forbidden it.

This way, at least, she still checks in with them.

But at the moment, it’s just Fima and Ersa, the Andor siblings, looking at each other in a tech repair room on the base of the Resistance.

“It’s fine,” Ersa says, stiffly, in response to Fima’s question.

He swallows. “You know, I’m always here, if you need anything--”

“I know,” Ersa says, shortly. “I’ll let you know.”

It isn’t that he thinks Ersa had to grow up too quickly, with the melancholia, and the war.

It’s that he thinks she had to grow  _ old _ too quickly.

She’s only youthful in body. The melancholia drains her mind.

“Okay,” he murmurs.

Ersa nods, and then drops back to the floor, crawling under her signal interceptor.

Fima takes the move for what it is: his cue to leave.

 

* * *

 

Fima, as it turns out, has missed a hell of a lot.

He’s missed Poe Dameron going to Jakku, to retrieve a part of the map that will, in theory, take them to Luke Skywalker.

Fima knows a little bit about Jakku. His father gave him a journal before he left for the Resistance, filling it with notes and memories of his time in the Civil War, with the hope Fima might learn from his mistakes and regrets, and have less of his own. Fima has read the journal cover-to-cover, multiple times, and passed it on to Ersa the second she joined the Resistance. In the journal, his father writes about the Battle of Jakku, and the death and chaos that occurred there.

So Fima knows Jakku is basically an artifact, a relic, of the Civil War.

He doesn’t envy Poe for this mission.

He especially doesn’t envy him when he learns that Poe was captured by the First Order, and tortured by Kylo Ren himself.

Whenever Fima hears the name Kylo Ren, he has to restrain himself from looking over at Leia Organa. He knows, in his heart of hearts, that whoever Kylo Ren is now; he isn’t her son. Not really. Not with what he’s become.

Fima had met Ben Solo exactly once, when he was young. He doesn’t remember much about him. Just that he was quiet, and always much taller than him, and that he had very little patience for Fima, compared to Poe, who seemed to have endless patience.

Anyway: Poe survived his encounter with Kylo Ren, escaping back to Jakku, and eventually hitching a ride back to D’Qar from there.

As for the droid: the Resistance recovered it on Takodana.

The  _ skirmish on Takodana, _ as Ersa put it, was a battle between the First Order and the Resistance at Maz Kanata’s castle. It ended with losses on both sides, and the castle entirely demolished, but with the droid carrying the map brought back to D’Qar, and for most, this is more than worth the battle.

But Han Solo (and more importantly, Leia Organa) feels bad about the damage done, and so Leia decides to send a small team to Takodana, to help Kanata with recovering what she can, and to spend a little time observing the patrons who might also come to Takodana in an effort to stay on Kanata’s good side, to see if maybe the Resistance can gain a few more allies out of this mess.

But first: she wants to send this team to Jakku, to the village destroyed by the First Order, to see if anyone survived the attack.

By the time Fima hears about all this, Ersa Andor and Nyota Baharia have already been assigned to go.

He guesses he shouldn’t be  _ too _ surprised; Ersa and Nyota run reconnaissance missions, going deep into the Outer Rim, exploring outposts and underground worlds, looking for hard evidence of the First Order breaking the Galactic Concordance. Ersa has a good memory, and a talent for noticing seemingly unimportant details, and a knack for discretion, making her perfect for reconnaissance and other intelligence work.

Nyota is all of these things as well, with the added bonus of being incredibly personable, a patient conversationalist, with a warmth that even the most hardened crime boss has been known to fall prey to. She is, in several ways, an inverse of Ersa. Ersa is a shark when she needs information, cutting and cold and threatening; and Nyota is a deer, friendly and understanding and smooth.

They work well together, and are more often than not very successful in their missions.

Additionally, Nyota is a born and raised resident of a planet with a similar climate and terrain to Jakku. Mantooine is all thick sand and irrepressible sunlight, and Nyota and Ersa (who spent half her childhood there, either joining her father on work trips or on trips to visit Nyota) will have no issues blending in with the citizens, or traversing Jakku.

And it doesn’t hurt that Ersa bears an uncanny resemblance to her father, and shares the ruthlessness and dedication to the cause that defined his years serving under Leia Organa herself, a fact Leia certainly keeps in mind.

Fima thinks this all over, and understands why General Organa has handpicked them for this work.

He finds Ersa and Nyota in their room, hurriedly packing; they’re leaving as soon as they’re ready.

Nyota smiles when she spots him, tugging a white scarf over her head.

“Come to see us off?” she asks.

“Of course,” he says.

She steps to his side, pressing a kiss to his cheek as he presses one to hers.

“Good luck,” he says, and Nyota gives him an exaggerated salute, before turning back to Ersa.

“Babe, I’m going to get the ship ready.”

“Roger that,” Ersa replies. Nyota leaves.

Fima watches as Ersa zips up a small duffel bag, throwing it over her shoulder, and picking up the DL-44 blaster resting on the windowsill. She checks it over once before holstering it on her belt, and looking at Fima with a raised eyebrow.

“See you later?”

Fima nods. “Yeah. Stay safe.”

“Uh huh. You too.”

She stands still as Fima steps close to her, putting his hands on her shoulders, and pressing a kiss to her forehead.

She watches him as he steps away, and for a moment, brother and sister only stand there, surveying the other through identical brown eyes.

“You don’t have to treat me like I’m made of glass,” she snaps, suddenly.

“I know. But I worry--”

“And you don’t have to worry, either.” Ersa frowns. “Fima. I need you to remember I’m just another soldier here, okay? I don’t… I don’t like it when you treat me differently.”

_ But you aren’t just another soldier here, Ersa. _

“I’m trying,” Fima murmurs.

“Try harder,” Ersa hisses, voice bordering anger. She bites her lip, closing her eyes for a moment, and Fima braces himself.

But then she only nods, and steps past him, walking out of the room.

Fima watches her go, and wonders if this is how she felt when he walked out of their house on Fest six years earlier.

He wonders if she will ever forgive him for treating her like she’s fragile.

He wonders if she will ever forgive him for what has become of her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Ring of Kafrene appears in ROGUE ONE, obviously. Italicized quotes taken from SAIL TO THE MOON. Nyota is an original character who appears in SHARE WITH ME THE SUN. The melancholia, and its implications, are discussed in that story and UNCURLING LIFELINES.
> 
> This is the Fima and Ersa story I mentioned being interested in writing last December. I assume, if you are here, you are familiar with who Fima and Ersa are; if you aren't: they are Cassian and Jyn's children from my "cassian andor nonsense" universe, including the timestamps series. welcome to the shitshow.
> 
> Special thanks to Vaderkat, for the thoughts on Fima and Ersa's Resistance roles, and also to that Anon on tumblr who sent a really stunningly detailed message about their thoughts. No idea who you are, but that was amazing. 
> 
> This story will be playing fast and loose with the timeline of TFA and TLJ, ultimately reaching the ending of the latter film. In theory, it will be four chapters long: two from Fima's POV, two from Ersa's. But knowing me, it might get stretched a bit. Like PARALLAX, I am posting before I've finished the story, but posting with the confidence I will finish soon. 
> 
> I would love any and all comments about this story. It is the most niche story I've ever written, in that it's being told from the perspective of original characters. I would be happy to know it was well worth the time/angst I spent figuring it out. it'd be a relief, honestly.
> 
> I am also on [tumblr](http://theputterer.tumblr.com)


	2. because you are full of rage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don’t do this, she cajoles herself. Don’t let yourself drown in the gray. Remember there is light. Remember you have light.

Ersa knew Jakku was a junkyard, knew it was all ugly brown sand and arid air, but she’s still surprised when they break through the atmosphere of the planet and get a good look at it.

It’s just so much _nothing._

She thinks of how part of the reason she and Nyota were chosen for this mission was due to the time they have spent on Mantooine, a planet that can also be described as a desert planet. But Mantooine is so much more than Jakku; it’s colorful, with orange and yellow sand, and electric blue skies, and bloody red sunsets. Jakku just looks monotonous.

Nyota, seated next to her in the pilot’s chair, glances down at their navigational chart.

“Should be coming up on it soon,” she murmurs.

The contact Poe was sent to meet is based in Tuanul, a village in the Kelvin Ravine. Little is known about the village, save that it’s populated by members of the Church of the Force, members who all choose to live without technology.

Poe had warned them that the last thing he’d heard before being taken aboard the First Order shuttle was an order that the village residents be massacred, but Ersa still hopes there might be some survivors.

This is a hope made false by the sight that meets them when they soar over a dune.

Smoke is still filtering into the sky, but the land under it is all black and ash, buildings and tents disintegrated, a few small fires burning feebly. There are scorch marks in the sand, and dozens of footprints, and everywhere: bodies.

Nyota utters a string of curse words in Mantooian, and lands the ship.

The two women scramble out, blasters ready.

But they knew it from the air: there are no living people left in Tuanul.

Ersa looks at Nyota, who nods, and the two women set off in opposite directions.

Ersa walks slowly through the heavy sand, taking stock of what remains of the village. There are water barrels split open by blaster fire, the spilled water already dissolved in the sand. A canvas tent flap waves like the saddest flag of surrender, the lone remaining piece of a structure that once housed a whole family. Blasters and knives litter the sand, either dropped or forced from their owners’ hands.

And the bodies; so many bodies.

The smell of smoke and leaking gas dominates the air, and so the smell of the corpses has not yet been made overwhelming. Ersa studies the faces of the people she passes, and they are people of all sizes, races, and species. She sees a boy, no older than five, eyes closed, an elderly woman sprawled over him, in an attempt to shield him from the six blaster shots that killed them.

She turns away from the sight.

Nyota is watching her, stricken.

“So much loss,” she whispers, voice barely carrying even over the thin wind.

 _Yes,_ Ersa thinks, and watches her world turn gray.

 

* * *

 

The melancholia crept up on her.

Ersa has never been what one might call a _normal_ child. She’s always been a little quiet, a bit unsure, a bad sleeper, and a frequent worrier. And she’s known why she is this way, and what it meant for her future. She’s long known her father is melancholic, and she’s long known they have a lot in common, in both appearance and personality, and so she’s long been aware that she might also become melancholic, like him.

But it crept up on her, still.

She was twelve, and Fima was gone, and everything turned gray.

But while the melancholia made her father silent and somber, it made her _angry._

Her psychiatrist said this was normal, that melancholia can manifest in different ways, but it took her parents off-guard. They’d spent her whole life preparing for her to become sad and despairing, so her manic rage and constant irritability was very surprising. And they didn’t know how to help her.

She distanced herself from them. She didn’t really mean to, but it happened, anyway.

She’d been close to her father her whole life, so closing herself off from him cut him deeply. He tried to reach out to her, hovering outside her closed bedroom door, cajoling her into going with him on his business trips to Mantooine, but whenever it was just the two of them, he seemed to lose his words.

In a fit of irony, the melancholia, this thing he thought would bring them closer together, seemed to tear them apart.

Their conversations are stilted, and awkward.

She talks more to her mother, who never presses her on anything, who only asks Ersa how she’s doing, how Nyota is, if she can say anything about what they’ve been up to. Her mother lets her say as much as she wants, as much as she _can,_ and seems content with it all.

The heartache is still present in her voice; catching, and reaching.

Ersa wishes she could be a better daughter, but she just. She can’t do it.

She lives in the gray, and keeps to herself in it.

 

* * *

 

The custom on Mantooine is cremation. This is due to the fact that the winds shift the sands so much that nothing can be buried for long on the planet, and that includes the dead. And then what kind of peace can the dead, and the living, have with that?

And so Ersa and Nyota burn the bodies on Jakku.

It takes hours, takes the majority of the day, but the sun over Jakku is formidable, and they never lose any light. Instead, they sweat, pulling off outer layers, but keeping their heads covered, to protect their mouths and ears from the sand, goggles pulled over eyes for more protection, as they gather the bodies together in preparation for a mass burning.

They burn the young, and the old. They burn human, and alien. They burn people of every gender.

Bodies wrapped in sheets or tarps or blankets or rugs, bodies then splattered with lighter fluid or gas.

Ersa throws the match.

The women stand in front of the gathered corpses, and watch them burn.

It is only when very little but ashes remain does the sun begin to set.

The Jakku sun reminds Ersa a little of Mantooine, in that it finally shows some color. It’s a bloody red, a red sun promising war, and if she blinks, she thinks she can see Star Destroyers and x-wings falling out of the sky, in a battle fought nearly thirty years earlier.

She blinks again, and sees only shifting sand.

Nyota squeezes her hand.

“Ready to go?” she asks.

“You can get the ship ready,” Ersa replies, her voice a croak.

And because Nyota knows her so well, and loves her despite this, she only nods, and walks away.

Ersa stands in front of the black sand and ash, her heart in her throat.

 _Don’t do this,_ she cajoles herself. _Don’t let yourself drown in the gray. Remember there is light. Remember you have light._

She looks at the sun, at all the bloody red light.

It has to be enough.

She turns her head, and notices a small array of tall ceramic pots stacked near a tent.

The pots are all in faded colors, browns and dark blues, and none of them survived the attack unscathed. Most have been smashed to pieces, run over by people trying to flee the chaos, or shot clean through by a blaster.

She runs her hand over the rough edge of what may have been a vase.

_“No, here…”_

_Fima adjusts her hands, placing them lower on the gray clay, clay that is rapidly spinning, moving on the table, movement propelled by Fima’s foot on the pedal. She follows his direction, and the pot realigns itself._

_“There you go,” Fima says. “Look, you’re a natural.”_

_Eleven-year-old Ersa scoffs. “No, that’s you.”_

_Fima shrugs. “I guess being named after the last good potter in this family means I inherited scraps of her talent.”_

_“Scraps,” Ersa repeats, dubious, eyeing the smooth vase on the windowsill, and her seventeen-year-old brother laughs._

Eighteen-year-old Ersa blinks.

“Scraps,” she repeats to herself now.

There’s a small vase near the bottom of the heap, and she picks it up. It’s chipped in places, a faded, dark gray, black spirals dancing along its sides.

She tucks the vase under her arm, and walks back to the ship.

 

* * *

 

“So: Takodana?”

Ersa sighs.

They’re back in the ship, flying quickly away from Jakku without any specific course set just yet, though they are headed in the direction of Takodana. Ersa knows Takodana is their next destination, knows it’s part of this _mission_ (though she isn’t even sure this kind of thing can be counted as a mission) but she can’t quite get the images of all the dead villagers out of her head, the children clutching adults, the lovers lying sprawled with hands reaching for the other…

A soft beeping interrupts her melancholic thoughts, and she sits up.

“Proximity alert,” Nyota says, looking at the scanner.

“What is it?”

“You’re the expert on ship models, not me.”

Ersa leans forward, studying the scanner.

“A freighter,” she surmises, going off the general mass of the thing. “A good-sized one, too.”

“What’s it doing all the way out here?”

“No idea, but it isn’t First Order-affiliated.”

It doesn’t match the specs of any of their ships, and besides; the First Order employs businesses to do its shipping for it. If these merchants and ships get caught, it’s on them; the First Order can plead ignorance, keeping the New Republic in the dark.

It not obviously being First Order-affiliated really only means it _could be_ First Order-affiliated.

“Let’s check it out,” Ersa says, and Nyota nods, moving them closer.

The freighter is _ugly._ All gray steel that has seen better days, battered and bruised, looking in places like it’s only being held together by plastoid tape. If Ersa hadn’t guessed it not to be a First Order freighter by now, the sight of the ship would be enough to confirm it.

“What a piece of junk,” she mutters. Nyota grabs her arm.

She jerks her head to the side. “Look.”

There’s a smaller starship docked on the side of the freighter, a starship that would be unremarkable in every way, save for the red symbol emblazoned on its side.

Ersa stares. “Is that--”

“A Guavian Death Gang ship?” Nyota asks, already pulling them closer. “Yup.”

“Kriff,” Ersa breathes.

Ersa and Nyota’s last mission had seen them tracking a shipment organized by a team from the Guavian Death Gang, a criminal organization operating in the Outer Rim; and one the Resistance has long suspected of working with, and for, the First Order. Catching the First Order in cahoots with the gang would be a boon; it’d be solid evidence of the First Order indulging in illegal criminal activity.

“The freighter must belong to the Guavian Death gang,” Ersa surmises.

“Not so sure about that,” Nyota says, guiding their ship around the other side of the freighter.

The hangar of the freighter has been blown out, the edges of the floor and ceiling burned away by some great heat. Scorch marks slice up the floor, a few small fires burning in patches around the hangar. Bodies litter the floor, some in plain dark clothes, others in the red uniforms of Guavian security soldiers.

“A bomb went off?” Ersa guesses.

“I don’t know,” Nyota says. “The pattern of detonation looks… weird. For it to be a bomb. It almost looks like a controlled explosion; the scorch marks on the floor are parallel, and the ones on the back wall look like a single long line.”

The two women pause, considering this.

“Oh, kriff,” Nyota gasps.

“What?”

“This is Han Solo’s freighter. The one he was on when he got the _Millennium Falcon_ back. The one that both Kanjiklub and the Guavian Death Gang attacked.”

“... Ah.”

Ersa had gotten the barest details of the story that led up to _Han Solo_ turning on on D’Qar, _Millennium Falcon_ in tow and everything. Thankfully, Nyota seems to have paid more attention.

The fact remains: there’s a Guavian Death Gang team on the freighter.

“Worth a shot?” Ersa asks.

Nyota grins. “Since we’re out here…”

Boarding a ship that is ostensibly being controlled by a group of Guavian Death Gang members is stupid at best, suicidal at worst. But they can count at least three dead Guavian security soldiers, and Guavian Death Gang security groups don’t usually travel in groups larger than six, which means there should, in theory, be only three other people on board.

In theory.

Nyota switches their exterior lights off, powering the ship down, cruising to a stop at a docking port on the freighter.

“Stick with the usual?” Ersa asks.

“Hasn’t failed us yet,” Nyota replies.

The usual: skulking around, checking things out, gathering intel on what they see. Taking solid evidence, noting the rest. Avoiding confrontation, but being prepared for it anyway.

It doesn’t seem to matter how much they try to avoid confrontation; it seems to occur regularly.

Ersa is okay with this.

They gather their weapons together, blasters and grenades, Nyota tying a foot-long thin and flat piece of black metal to her belt, Ersa holstering a half-foot long silver cylinder at her waist. Once done, they look at each other.

“May the Force be with us,” Ersa says, and Nyota grins.

“As always, my brightest sun,” she returns, and steps forward to kiss her.

 

* * *

 

The freighter is very quiet.

Ersa and Nyota make their way down the halls, keeping their steps light and quick, to minimize any noise their boots might make. The lights are flickering oddly, sparking in some places, and there are smoking holes in the walls, blaster marks gone awry or missing their target.

The women stop when they come across a _tentacle,_ lying in the middle of one of the halls.

Nyota nudges it with her boot, before turning to Ersa, raising an eyebrow.

Ersa doesn’t recognize the species it originated from, and can’t comprehend a reason for the Guavian Death Gang to have it.

 _I have a bad feeling about this,_ she thinks, but doesn’t dare voice the thought.

They round a corner, coming face to face with two red-armored Guavian security guards.

For a moment, the four simply stare at one another.

And then they move.

 

* * *

 

Ersa and Nyota have been fighting together for years. They’d spar as children, though they wouldn’t call it _sparring_ then; there was no goal except to make the other laugh, and to shove the other face-first into sand or snow, depending on which planet they were on. But as teenagers, with the threat of the First Order and their plans to join the Resistance as soon as they could, they took fighting more seriously.

Neither of Nyota’s parents know how to fight. But both of Ersa’s parents do, having spent their childhoods and much of their adulthoods doing just that, in the Galactic Civil War.

Ersa had expected her father to want to teach her how to fight, upon her decision to join the Resistance, and so she was quite taken aback when he flat-out refused. He’d been so quick to agree with Fima’s decision to join with the Resistance, and if he’d had time, she’d always thought he would have taught Fima how to fight before Fima left.

She knew her father treated her differently, and it wasn’t because she was a girl; it was because she had the melancholia, like he did.

He was afraid the war would swallow her up, like it did him. It took him decades to leave it, and he nearly lost everything more than once, including Ersa’s mother, and even Fima.

But at this point, Ersa and her father were distant, which was new for them.

So when her father refused to teach her to fight, her mother stepped up to do it.

This had been just as surprising to Ersa as her father’s decision.

She guessed that, maybe, her mother had finally had enough time to understand Fima’s choice to join the war, and that this perspective helped her come to terms with Ersa’s choice much more quickly.

Her mother had always had an unconventional fighting style, one she honed during years of guerilla warfare, dirty street fights, and from a diverse cast of mentors, and so Ersa’s style is similarly… unusual.

 

* * *

 

Ersa uses her short height to her advantage, ducking out of the range of the security guards’ blasters, running fearlessly to them instead, a move they clearly did not expect due to its obvious idiocy. She throws herself bodily at the nearest one, getting satisfaction at the soft _oof_ the guard emits, stumbling back a couple steps. She hears the sound of sliding metal, an indicator that Nyota has unsheathed the blades on both sides of her double-bladed sword, the Guavian security guards quickly moving backwards from the blades.

The Guavian security guards are no simple hired hands; they’re pumped with chemicals that boost their physical strength and abilities, and fighting one feels like fighting two. But Ersa and Nyota have had plenty of experience of taking on more than they can really handle.

This is basically just any other day for them.

Ersa takes the security guard down, shoving him back far enough to shoot him, a blast that leaves a cavernous hole in his chest. Here she pauses, because rather than leave blood splattered over the red uniform, the blaster has caused wires to unfold from the guard’s chest.

 _It’s the pump,_ she realizes, with a wave of horror.

The pump that acts as a second heart, sending the chemical solution through the guard’s veins. She knew it was mechanical, knew it was definitely not natural, but there is something in _seeing it,_ in seeing the machine in the man, that makes her freeze.

Distantly, she can hear Nyota calling her name.

A red jet of light flashes past Ersa’s head, so close it grazes her cheek, leaving a streak of blood.

She snaps out of her daze.

A new man has joined the fray, staring at them with clear surprise, and a lot of confusion. Unlike the security guards, the man is dressed in dark-colored clothes, hair thin and brown. His left leg is cybernetic, and there’s a tear in the knee of his pants, like he’s fallen recently.

“Who the _hell_ are you?” the man demands, in a thick accent.

“The Resistance,” Ersa replies, and the man’s face clears somewhat, and then he’s advancing on her, aiming his blaster again--

Ersa reaches for the silver cylinder at her waist.

With a soft hissing sound, the blade of light ignites.

It’s enough to make the man freeze.

“The hell--”

She’s on him, ducking low, swinging the blade like a truncheon. It catches the man in the leg, just above the cybernetic, slicing the cybernetic clean off, and he screams, toppling over. Ersa stands, kicking the blaster away.

The man stares at her, still managing to convey anger despite his obvious fear.

“J… _Jedi--”_

“Not even close,” Ersa snaps.

She turns around, sees Nyota stumbling against the guard she’s currently fighting, and Ersa lifts the blade, and throws--

It lands in the center of the guard’s back, cutting clean through.

He falls soundlessly.

Nyota straightens, brushing her black hair out of her blue eyes.

“Always dramatic,” she mutters, reaching down to tug the lit blade from the guard’s back.

She turns it off, tossing it back to Ersa.

“Saved your ass,” Ersa replies.

“That’s a lightsaber,” the last living man insists, still sprawled on the floor.

“Not quite,” Ersa says. “See, this blade is only six-inches long. And a truly… boring color.”

The blade is gray.

She shrugs.

“Not a Jedi,” she says. “Just happened to have a kyber crystal and be good at building things. Comes in handy.”

Nyota rolls her eyes, but crouches down to look at the fallen man.

“You’re with the Guavian Death Gang,” she notes.

“What gave me away,” the man asks, dryly.

“What’s your name?”

The man gives her a look.

Ersa twirls the lightblade in her hand. “Want to lose the other leg?”

“Bala-Tik,” the man grumbles, which is as good an answer to both questions as any.

“Bala-Tik,” Nyota repeats. “Okay, listen. We all know this isn’t your freighter. We know it belongs to Han Solo, and we know you attacked him, and we know it was over an unpaid debt. We know that’s why you’re here. So why don’t you tell us where you were going _next.”_

Bala-Tik stares up at her, defiance clear in his face, and so Ersa rolls her eyes, ignites the lightblade, and sinks it into his thigh.

His scream echoes through the hall.

Ersa can feel Nyota’s eyes on her, but she doesn’t look at her.

She pulls the lightblade out of his thigh, extinguishing it.

“The Silver,” Bala-Tik grunts.

Ersa and Nyota don’t so much as glance at each other.

“What’s in the Silver?” Nyota asks.

“The key to the future of the First Order,” Bala-Tik says, and when Ersa raises the lightblade, he hurriedly adds, “I don’t know what it is, exactly! It’s just something they think will preserve their future, and something they cannot send one of their official leaders to get, lest they be caught by a New Republic, or _Resistance,_ spy. I only know it’s in the saloon under the black sun, with the man with the blade hand.”

 _Blade hand?_ Ersa repeats to herself.

Bala-Tik seems to gather their uncertainty, because he lifts his hand, and wiggles his fingers.

“Blades for fingers,” he says.

It is not the strangest thing Ersa has ever heard a person having, but it is possibly the creepiest.

It’s certainly distinctive.

“You’re meeting the… blade hand man,” Nyota says, rolling her eyes at the moniker. “And picking up this thing the First Order wants? Acting as their middle man?”

“Aye.”

Nyota nods.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” she says, and straightens, Ersa jumping up to stand with her.

“Meet you back at the ship?” Ersa checks.

Nyota looks like she wants to argue, but she only bites her lip and nods.

Ersa goes.

 

* * *

 

She makes her way to the freighter’s control room.

There’s still a nearly-full plate of Factryn meat pie on the dash, though it’s begun to smell, and Ersa wrinkles her nose. She approaches the control panel, studying the switches and navigational devices, eyes flitting over the compressor and link to the hyperdrive.

She thinks about carefully taking it all apart, to bring salvageable parts back to the Resistance, pieces they desperately need to retrofit other ships.

But she feels that burn in her chest, thinking of the Guavian Death Gang and how they help the First Order, and in the next moment, she’s ignited the blade, and is tearing the control panel apart.

Charred bits of metal fall around her boots, while sparks and embers fly through the air, passing her face, a couple landing in her clothes. She moves quickly, and ferociously, hacking at everything she can reach, turning useful technology into burnt waste, until nothing is recognizable, and everything is in its wrong place.

When the smoke becomes too much, she leaves.

She returns to the Resistance ship, finding Nyota on board, ready to go.

“He won’t be following us,” she says.

“You put a hole in his good leg and cut off his prosthesis,” Nyota replies. “I’d certainly agree, he won’t be following us.”

There’s an edge to Nyota’s voice, and Ersa doesn’t like it.

She turns, putting her hands on her hips.

“Speak plainly,” she snaps.

Nyota looks at her, blue eyes calm.

“You’re stressed,” she says, and Ersa hates how smooth her voice is. “And you’re angry. And you’re taking it out in a brutal way.”

“As opposed to, what, a casual way--”

“As opposed to a _healthy_ way,” Nyota interrupts. “Brutality is not _you,_ Ersa. It makes you cold, and cruel, and unkind--”

“We’re fighting a _war,_ Nyota,” Ersa snaps. “There’s no time to be _kind.”_

“There is always time to be kind.”

Ersa closes her eyes.

She’s so tired of this old argument.

The outcome never changes. It only succeeds in her getting pissed off at Nyota, and Nyota looking at her with something like pity, and that only restarts the cycle.

They just don’t have _time_ for this.

“Are we headed to the Silver, then?” Ersa asks, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat.

Nyota sighs, deciding not to return to the previous topic.

“We have to go to Takodana first,” she replies. “Like we were originally ordered to. Remember? Then from there we can get in touch with base, and see what they think we should do.”

Ersa had almost forgotten about the order to go to Takodana, to see what help they could offer Maz Kanata.

It feels like a huge waste of time, in the face of the intel they’ve just learned, but Nyota has a point.

Orders are orders, and Ersa is good at following them.

She nods.

Nyota takes care to land a few critical shots on the Guavian Death Gang starship docked on the side of the freighter before sending them off into hyperspace.

 

* * *

 

Ersa has never been to Takodana before.

She’s heard about it, of course. Takodana is a neutral planet, making it a perfect rest stop for travelers, and sometimes those travelers have valuable information about the First Order, information the Resistance might be able to attain and use. It’s also a haven for the seedier folks of the galaxy; smugglers, traders, fugitives, and explorers, and the Resistance has an interest in all of these people as well.

Maz Kanata’s castle is easy to find. Even if they didn’t have the exact coordinates for it, the pile of rubble sticks out like its own landmark, mess and destruction amidst so much green.

“I’m not sure how much we can help,” Ersa mutters, surveying the site as Nyota lands them.

Nyota shoots her a look. “Be _kind.”_

Ersa bites her lip to refrain from saying something scathing.

They disembark, and make their way towards the rubble.

About two dozen or so people have already reached the remains of the castle. Everyone is working together, conversing politely and quietly, and if it were not for the fact that this is Maz Kanata’s castle, Ersa would think them to be a diverse village of kind bystanders. But she knows better, and recognizes a few faces from various wanted posters and databanks, and knows this crowd is only really diverse in their crimes.

She and Nyota have only been watching the scene for a minute when they’re approached by the smallest person Ersa has ever seen.

She can’t even be one and a half meters tall, with orange skin and dusty clothes. Yet there is something inherently authoritative about her, effortlessly expressing confidence and pride, despite her short stature.

The woman peers up at Ersa (who isn’t tall to begin with) and positively cranes her neck to look at Nyota (who is pretty tall).

She has dark brown eyes, comically magnified behind thick glasses.

“Ah,” she says. “The Resistance.”

Nyota nods. “Ms. Kanata--”

Maz Kanata snorts. _“Ms._ That’s sweet. It’s just Maz.”

“Maz,” Nyota amends. “I’m Nyota, and this is Ersa. General Organa sent us here to offer our services, and see if there might be anything we can do to help. The Resistance sends its deepest sympathies for all you’ve lost here.”

“I bet,” Maz says, dryly, and Nyota flushes. Maz Kanata’s castle may have been demolished by the First Order, but the battle between the Resistance and the First Order that followed certainly did not help things. “Still; it was nice of Leia. Did Han make it home?”

“Um, yes,” Nyota says.

“Hm. Good.” Maz glances around. “Well, my girl; there’s a green Twi’lek woman over there. Aria. She’s trying to recover what she can from the kitchen. See if you can help her.”

Nyota nods. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You,” Maz says, turning to Ersa. “Follow me.”

Ersa nods, exchanging one last look with Nyota before following Maz.

The woman moves quickly, despite her short legs and general height disadvantage, and Ersa scrambles to keep up. They climb over rubble and debris, past a couple Barabels using their physical strength to toss dilapidated walls and infrastructure carelessly to the side, and past a surprisingly neat stack of chairs.

Maz leads her to the lake’s edge, and then spins on her heel, staring up at Ersa.

“Wash,” she says.

Ersa looks around. “Um. Wash what?”

In a lightning-quick move, Maz reaches forward, and seizes Ersa’s hand. Ersa looks down.

Between her dark mood and adrenaline rush from tearing the freighter control room apart, she’d neglected to check herself over, and so she’d missed the blood stains coating her knuckles. Some of the blood belonged to her, while the other belonged to one or more Guavian Death gang soldier.

Maz raises an eyebrow, and Ersa kneels on the dirt beach, submerging her hands in the lake water.

As she scrubs her knuckles, Maz speaks: “You look familiar.”

Ersa glances up at her, squinting in the bright Takodana sunlight. “I’ve never been here before.”

She jumps when Maz crouches down next to her, studying her face. “I never forget a pair of eyes.”

“I have my father’s eyes, if that helps.”

“What is his name?”

“Cassian Andor,” Ersa says, turning away from Maz Kanata’s discomfitingly probing gaze.

“I don’t recall that name,” Maz murmurs.

Ersa shrugs, wiping her clean hands on her thighs. “I’m sorry then, Maz, I don’t know what--”

“Ersa.”

“Yes?”

Maz smiles, adjusting her goggles, making her eyes impossibly huge.

“I used to know a girl about your age,” Maz says, leaning in, and Ersa leans away, instinctively. “She had an anger, and a fire, not unlike you. And a name close to your own.”

Ersa pauses. “Jyn Erso?”

“Small galaxy,” Maz remarks. “Your mother?”

“Yes. She came here?”

“She _lived_ here,” Maz says. “If I recall correctly. She visited my castle, once or twice.” Maz waves a hand at the ruins of her castle. “Ah, well. Quiet girl. With a lot of anger in her heart, and fear in her head.” She looks Ersa up and down. “You are very like her.”

Ersa snorts. This is not an opinion she’s heard a lot. “If you say so.”

“Child,” Maz says, and normally such a descriptor would irritate Ersa, but from Maz Kanata, it sounds like a very warm endearment. “Do not let this war take your goodness from you.”

This sentence is so out of range of their current topic that Ersa can only stare.

Maz looks, suddenly, quite old and sad.

“I have lived a long time,” she murmurs. “And seen far too many good people lose themselves to war. You are… You are falling.”

“I have a war to fight.”

“So you know the difference between winning and losing.”

Ersa looks at her.

“You don’t know a thing about me.”

A small smile crosses Maz’s face.

“Perhaps,” she says.

She straightens, which barely puts her head above Ersa’s.

“If you will excuse me,” she says. “I have a union dispute to oversee.”

Ersa watches her walk away, before turning back to the shining lake, the green hills beyond.

She had failed to notice, that in the process of drying her hands on her thighs, she had gotten them dirty all over again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha, so.
> 
> Ersa having a lightblade is 100% a thing because I A) thought it would be cool, so i'm pleading cool creative license there, and B) I was getting bummed out thinking about the Lack of lightsabers in the new STAR WARS movies. like i understand that is The Point, and I've had 2+ years to get used to this, but still.
> 
> In old EU canon: it is possible for non Force-users to build and wield lightsabers. it's just incredibly difficult, particularly because lightsabers are a tricky weapon. Ersa's is basically a glorified dagger. a full blade she almost definitely wouldn't be able to handle. and a reminder: the kyber crystal Ersa had was the one Cassian found on Ilum; Fima has Lyra Erso's kyber crystal.
> 
> Jakku, Tuanul, Guavian Death Gang soldiers, Takodana stuff taken from THE FORCE AWAKENS and wookieepedia info. Jyn Erso did spend some time on Takodana, though that is the extent of my knowledge on that subject.
> 
> Maz's parting line sets us in THE LAST JEDI. [timeline being played very fast and loose here.]
> 
> Cassian never made it to Takodana in the Nonsense; he has never met Maz. But it was well-established in the Nonsense that he inherited his eyes from someone who did some galaxy-traveling before she ultimately settled on Fest, and it could be possible that this person met Maz at some point.... :)
> 
> I made a fun moodboard thing for Ersa on my tumblr, to complement this story, and the other moodboards already made for Serafima Cassiano, Nerezza Andor, Taraja Ya'qul, and Asori Joshi:
> 
> [Ersa Amaia Andor moodboard](http://theputterer.tumblr.com/post/170724902691/ersa-amaia-andor-ersa-amaia-andor-was-born-in)


	3. why are you full of rage?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fima has considered the end before. The capital-E End.

Fima has considered the end before.

The capital-E End.

It was inevitable he would think about it; he’s fighting a dangerous, precarious war, a war made all that more critical by the fact the First Order has wiped out the New Republic government.

He’s stunned when he finds out, his shock amplified by the fact he only learns this at the same time as Starkiller Base is revealed to the Resistance. It is a lot to take in. The Resistance has been propped up by the New Republic for years. The New Republic quietly, and very unofficially, provides the Resistance with supplies, including credits, blasters, rations, and ships, with the promise that the Resistance will keep an eye on the First Order, and report any intel they find on its illegal activities. It was not much--and everyone knows the First Order is very clearly dangerous--but it was a start.

Now, it seems, it’s too late.

The New Republic is gone.

The Resistance is on its own.

Staring down certain death.

Fima stands in the command center, unable to tear his eyes away from the schematic of Starkiller Base, the planet turned unnatural weapon. It looks like it has an eye in its center, giving the impression of being all watchful, and if Fima stares at it for too long, he starts to think it’s looking at _him,_ specifically. It’s impossible, of course; not only is he looking at a basic schematic, but Starkiller Base, and the First Order, have no reason to take a close look at Fima Andor. He’s just one soldier among a hundred. Not remarkable in the slightest.

He jumps when he feels a hand brush his elbow. He turns, looking down at Kaydel Ko Connix.

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “I know.”

Kaydel has been in the Resistance for years, almost as long as Fima has. They’re the same age, and so Fima took Kaydel under his wing when she joined, teaching her everything he knew about survival, fighting skills, foreign languages, and history. Kaydel came from a family with no military or war experience, and was desperate to learn anything that could help her, and Fima has always been a kind and patient teacher. Their closeness and camaraderie, the fact that they almost never disagreed on the best course of action, led to them both being assigned to work directly under General Organa. They both work as operations controllers, though Kaydel focuses on ground operations and Fima focuses more on air operations.

“How the hell are they going to pull this one off,” Fima mutters.

They’ve got two squadrons headed to Starkiller Base, with the singular goal of destroying the planet-killing weapon. Ahead of them is Han Solo, Chewbacca, and a former stormtrooper with the knowledge of how to lower the base’s shields to allow the x-wings to attack it. The plan is shaky, and liable to fall apart in fifty different places. But it’s all they’ve got.

The weapon is locked on D’Qar.

Fima looks at Starkiller Base.

He reaches for his neck, tugging out the kyber crystal that hangs from the cord he wears.

He holds it tightly in his hand, and he considers The End.

The End, without Ersa.

 

* * *

 

The day after Ersa arrived on the Resistance base, and filled out her enlistment forms, Fima got a call from his mother.

He actually answered it, aware that his mother would very likely make a personal appearance on the base if he didn’t, and Fima was definitely not prepared to deal with that. Not because he’d feel embarrassed if she turned up to berate him for failing to answer her calls--she’d warned him a long time ago that that was absolutely something she would do, and he believed her--but because he was nervous his mother would take one look at him, at the fear hiding under his skin at all times, and remind him he could go home.

He was worried he’d seriously think about taking her up on it.

So Fima answered her hologram call.

His mother looked tired, dark bags under her eyes, face lined with anxiety and simple exhaustion. She suddenly looked undeniably _old,_ old in a way he’d never thought of her before. He was reminded of how General Organa tended to look older than she actually was, and how this was likely due to the stress brought on by constantly fighting seemingly unwinnable wars. And so, for the first time, Fima got a glimpse of Jyn Erso, the soldier.

Not Jyn Erso, his mother.

He felt himself straightening under her gaze, slipping into the posture of a soldier standing before his superior officer.

“Hi, baby,” she said, and Fima was twenty-three years old, but never tried to get her to stop calling him that.

He allowed it to happen. He suspected she needed it.

“Hi, Mama,” he returned, and his mother’s eyes softened.

“Did Ersa make it?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Checked in yesterday. General Organa’s assigned her to physical training. Nyota’s with her.”

He thought the blow of Ersa joining the Resistance was lessened by the fact she wasn’t joining alone; Nyota, her best friend from childhood, and now her girlfriend, had come with her. If there was anyone capable of keeping Ersa in line; it was her.

“Good,” Fima’s mother murmured, and he nodded.

He waited for her to speak, to specify why she’d called beyond wanting to make sure Ersa made it.

After a moment, she sighed.

“I won’t ask you to keep an eye on her,” his mother said, voice quiet. “Because that would be unfair, and not something you deserve. You are not your sister’s keeper, Fima, and I want you to remember that. I want to make sure you understand there are no expectations that you… That you keep her out of harm’s way, off the front lines. Because we all know Ersa, and we know she’s there to _fight.”_

Fima nodded, and did not disagree.

“You have our permission to only treat her like any other soldier,” she continued. “I thought you might need to hear it from us.”

“Yeah,” Fima mumbled.

“I know we… Your father and I, we have a difficult time respecting the two of you,” she said. “We have a hard time understanding you’re both soldiers, and we’re civilians. We… I know I sound like your nagging mother, asking you about your school day, whenever I--”

“Mama,” Fima whispered, shaking his head. “No.”

“We pushed Ersa too hard,” she murmured, eyes glistening, and Fima’s heart broke, and he also wanted to kill Ersa for whatever had happened back home, and he was suddenly _relieved_ his father had not joined this call. “So, it’s important… Treat her like anyone else. Okay, Fima?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“You are not your sister’s keeper,” she repeated.

It was exactly the kind of thing he needed to hear.

Because Fima had been the first to want Ersa.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t remember the specifics, exactly. He was young, four years old, when he calmly told his mother that he wanted a sibling. She’d been surprised by this wish, though Fima isn’t sure why; he’s pretty sure most kids _want_ siblings, someone to play with, another kid to live with. Fima desperately wanted to be a big brother. Most of the kids at his school had siblings, and he saw how close they all were, and he craved it.

It took his parents almost two years to come around to this way of thinking.

But they did.

And now Fima’s earliest memory is the sight of his newborn baby sister.

He remembers being stunned at just how _small_ she was, how pink and soft, how her eyes seemed impossibly huge in her tiny face. He remembers his mother’s sweat-stained face, his father’s teary eyes, and how they clustered close together to better see her. He remembers cautiously extending his hand, and he remembers Ersa’s fragile fingers trying to cling to him.

It was Fima’s idea to name her after their mother.

There was no one he loved more than her.

Until Ersa.

So when his mother told him they didn’t expect him to keep Ersa out of battle, that they didn’t expect him to try and hold her back--

When his mother reminded him he is not his sister’s keeper--

Fima was grateful.

But unsure he could believe it.

 

* * *

 

Amazingly, they succeed.

The Resistance destroys Starkiller Base.

Fima is so surprised, he almost forgets to be relieved.

Han Solo is killed on the base by Kylo Ren. The news is received in silence on the Resistance base. If anyone hadn’t known Kylo Ren was Ben Solo, they do now; patricide is not easily a topic of gossip one avoids. There is also a united effort to not openly slander Kylo Ren in front of the General; not because she wouldn’t want her husband’s killer to be despised, but because she might still have mixed feelings about Kylo Ren. He is her husband’s murderer, responsible for the creation of Starkiller Base, a high-ranking figure within the First Order; but he is also her son. Fima is not a mother, but he is a son, and his parents had repeatedly emphasized that there was nothing he could do to make them stop loving him, or wanting to see him.

He’s never heard Leia Organa talk about Ben Solo, but he knows Leia Organa, has seen how dedicated she is to a cause, and imagines this includes her son.

So the news spreads through the Resistance, and everyone consciously chooses to not mention Han Solo or Kylo Ren in front of the General.

Luckily, they have a lot to focus on.

Including the evacuation of the base.

Kaydel is put in charge of evacuation from the ground, and the General promotes her to Lieutenant, because an officer has to lead the evacuation. Kaydel swells at the General’s soft praise, and Fima smiles at her and wishes they had the time to make a bigger deal of the promotion. Maybe they eventually will.

Fima is charged with helping the overseeing of the evacuation from the air, tasked with monitoring the hangar of the _Raddus,_ making sure every transport is brought onboard and put in its correct place. The evacuation will be chaotic, and so this job is no easy task, and Fima is privately thrilled that the General has put him in charge of this.

He and Kaydel take a moment in the corridor to quietly flip out, congratulating the other and wishing the other good luck, before going their separate ways.

Fima runs through the halls, barking orders, offering instruction and direction. Everyone is moving rapidly, but there still seems to be an air of calm. No one has panicked (openly) and Fima takes this as a very good sign.

He runs into the living quarters of the base, and slows.

Before he can second-guess himself, or overthink it, he darts down the hallway, reaching Ersa and Nyota’s room.

Like everyone else in the Resistance, they don’t have much. They took the majority of their things with them on their mission, but there are still clothes hanging in the closet, a pair of boots left at the foot of the bed, and a couple blasters on the windowsill. Fima enters the space, taking the blasters, but leaving the clothes; blasters are expensive, and clothes are not. They can get more far more easily than they could blasters.

His departure is distracted by a flicker at the corner of his eye.

Fima turns, and sees a hologram resting on a small table next to the bed. He steps closer, and picks it up.

His breath catches at the faces projected in it.

It’s them. It’s his family.

He thinks it was taken about ten years ago, going by Ersa’s missing teeth and frizzy braids, back when she kept her hair long, to her waist. Fima’s fourteen-year-old face is pimpled with acne, his hair messy and shorter than it is now. Both his parents look younger, their faces less lined and weary, smiling warmly at each other, and their children.

His heart aches just looking at it.

He thinks the last time the four of them were together, in their house on Fest, was the day he left. And this is very much a kind of tragedy.

The war has fractured them. He knows war does this, that he probably should have considered it years ago, but the evidence is directly in front of him. His mother does not look stressed. His father looks peaceful. Fima is carefree. Ersa’s smile is wide, and true.

The war has asked so much of all of them.

Swallowing hard, he pockets the hologram.

He leaves the room.

 

* * *

 

Everything falls apart.

 

* * *

 

The First Order follows them through lightspeed.

Fima stands in the command center of the _Raddus,_ and tries very hard not to think too much about that. There isn’t anything he can do; and besides, he’s got a hangar to oversee, pilots clamoring for his attention, ready with lists of necessary repairs for battered x-wings and y-wings.

He can hear Poe arguing with General Organa, Poe’s cheek bright red with a slap from the General herself (and that had certainly been a moment). But their argument is cut short by the First Order fleet beginning an assault against what remains of the Resistance fleet. They lose the _Virgil_ almost immediately.

General Organa orders pilots to their stations, and Fima leaves the bridge.

He’ll more easily oversee the chaos in the hangar by actually being there, and so he sprints through the halls of the _Raddus._ Unlike the evacuation on D’Qar, there is a hint of panic in the air; the revelation of the First Order tracking them through lightspeed is a devastating one, and not one easily swallowed.

Fima’s journey to the main hangar is halted by Kaydel, seizing his elbow and stopping him.

“No one on the bridge is picking up,” she says. “Do you know where I’m stationed?”

“They’re probably too busy,” Fima mutters, and Kaydel does not disagree. “I could use the help organizing the hangar, if you want to tag along?”

“It’ll give me something to do,” Kaydel says, and follows him.

As Fima predicted, the squadrons are a mess. Some x-wings are more ready to go than others, already fueled up and rumbling, pilots chattering away over the coms. A few squadron leaders are attempting to get a strategic plan together, while others insist there is no time, that the assault must occur as soon as possible. Fima thinks both of these perspectives are valid, which doesn’t help anyone.

He and Kaydel station themselves at one set of doors separating the hangar from the rest of the ship, to try and intercept anyone running through. Kaydel takes note of everyone who passes, while Fima tracks which squadrons have checked in.

“Hell of a day,” he mutters to himself, wondering when the last time he slept was.

“Ugh, Brando’s trying to drag a power block into the hangar on his own,” Kaydel notes, glaring down the hall. “I’m going to go help him. You okay here?”

“If you define ‘okay’ as being totally and completely overwhelmed, then yeah, I’m stellar.” He looks up, rolling his eyes at Kaydel’s hesitation. _“Go,_ Kaydel.”

She nods, running off.

He returns to the datapad in his hands.

A whistling sound shrieks through the air.

Fima looks up, in time to see the torpedos land, in time to see the fireball that rips through the hangar. He’s knocked off his feet, thrown into the hallway behind him, smacking his back into the wall. He slides down, winded, to see the hangar ablaze, x-wings on fire and smoldering, ammunitions getting set off by the heat.

But there are no screams.

Only bodies, littering the floor.

Fima blinks.

The doors slam shut, the alarms echoing behind the door, sealing off the hangar from the rest of the ship.

He closes his eyes.

 

* * *

 

_“Take my hand.”_

_Ersa’s hand fits easily into his, thin and fragile like a snowflake, and he is suddenly terrified, second-guessing his offer to teach her to ice-board._

_“We’ll go slow,” he decides._

_“Fima,” Ersa says, groaning a little. He looks down at her, catching narrowed brown eyes nearly hidden by the red scarf that covers most of her face, and the next thing he knows, she’s moving, leaning forward, letting her board glide over the ice._

_He freezes on the spot, mouth dropped, terror gripping him, “Ersa--”_

_“Look, Fima!” Ersa calls, but she does not turn to look at him, her gaze down, focusing on the ice disappearing under her sliding board._

_It is only then that he registers she’s let go of his hand._

_“Ersa!”_

_He breaks into a run, but Ersa is gliding faster and faster, and she’s begun to laugh, squealing with delight, and it is all Fima can do to keep up._

_“Fima, look! Fima! Fima!”_

 

* * *

 

_“Fima!”_

He opens his eyes, managing to turn his head, spotting Kaydel running to him, a stricken look on her face. She drops to her knees. He notices one of the two buns on her head looks a little gray, stained with ash.

“Are you alright?” she asks.

“I think so,” Fima murmurs. He stares at the blast doors. “What the hell happened?”

“One of the TIE fighters got through our shields,” Kaydel says, disgust lacing her voice. “I guess--”

She breaks off, as the entire ship suddenly rumbles, shaking violently.

Alarms flash through the corridor.

Fima and Kaydel leap to their feet, darting to a ship computer set in the wall. Kaydel pulls up the schematics, and they both freeze.

The bridge: it’s _gone._

“No,” Kaydel whispers.

Fima swallows, hard.

“Come on,” he says.

He doesn’t notice until after they’ve started running, racing to the elevator to take them upstairs, that Kaydel has taken his hand, and he’s gripping hers back just as tightly.

 

* * *

 

Fima has interacted with Amilyn Holdo only once before; the Admiral deals with the movements of troops on the ground, and so their work doesn’t ever really intersect. But the Admiral had toured the Resistance base one day, and taken care to meet as many people as she could, and General Organa had introduced her to Fima with a warm smile.

Admiral Holdo had looked him up and down once, before commenting: “Yep. You’re Andor’s son.”

Fima had certainly heard that before, and didn’t think much of it. Holdo had shaken his hand, thanked him for his service, and gone on her way.

Now, she’s set to lead the Resistance in General Organa’s place.

That upcoming day, the one where Leia Organa is not around to lead? Turns out, it’s this day.

Poe is unimpressed by Holdo.

“We need a _plan,”_ he states, arms crossed tightly over his chest.

It’s a small cluster of them, hovering outside the newly-declared command center that is not the bridge. Fima looks around at the other faces, and realizes the people who have automatically gathered around Poe are all the young leaders General Organa has spent the past six years grooming to take over the Resistance.

They all look afraid, and exhausted; but also resolute, and determined.

They will fight for the Resistance until the very end.

The End, The End, The End.

Fima thinks of Ersa, and Nyota, over on Takodana.

He wonders if they’ve tried contacting the Resistance on D’Qar yet, only to receive ominous static. He wonders if they’ve heard about Starkiller Base being destroyed, if they’ve understood the Resistance is on the run.

He doesn’t know when he’ll have time to try and get in touch with them.

He doesn’t know _if_ he will be able to get in touch with them.

He stands in front of Poe, Kaydel at his side, and resolves to do everything possible to ensure the Resistance survives, to ensure _someone_ survives, so Ersa and Nyota have a place to go after all of this.

 

* * *

 

General Organa wakes up to nothing short of a social disaster.

The mutiny was somewhat successful; they take the _Raddus,_ but not for long, and it ends with General Organa stunning Poe with a blaster, and the rest of the mutineers meekly surrendering. Fima feels sheepish, and a little ashamed, taking in the General’s exhaustion and exasperation.

Admiral Holdo, as it turns out, had a plan.

Crait.

The vast majority of the Resistance has never heard of the planet.

But Fima has, because his father had been to the Rebel outpost on the planet during the Civil War.

This fact is only a single line in his father’s journal, a mention that he’d gone to Crait with General Organa to see about re-establishing the abandoned outpost as a main case for the Alliance. What exactly had happened there is unknown to Fima; his father did not go into details. He’d only noted they’d determined the planet was not an ideal location.

Evidently, Admiral Holdo and General Organa have decided to go for it now, some thirty years later.

Though they don’t really have any other choice.

Fima is back in charge of a hangar, this one crowded with transports. He’s separating squads and teams into various transports, working to keep everyone with their assigned group, when a hand wraps around his shoulder.

He turns, looking down to meet General Organa’s eyes.

He swallows.

“General, I--”

“I understand, Captain Andor,” General Organa replies. Her dark brown eyes are not hard, or disappointed; they have a twinkle, and a hint of warmth, and he relaxes somewhat. “I wanted to ask you to board a different transport than my own. And not because I’m angry with you; but because I trust you to head up your own transport.”

It is a kind, generous thing to do, especially for a very recent mutineer.

Fima is speechless.

“I’m sorry,” he manages, unable to stop himself.

“I know,” General Organa says. “You’re forgiven.”

She starts to walk away, leaning heavily on her cane, before suddenly turning around.

“I know I repeatedly tell you how you remind me of your parents,” she says, and Fima nods, unable to deny this. “But I want you to know; you are your own man, and just as hardworking, and brilliant, and loyal as them. I’m very grateful to have you here, Fima.”

It’s been years since the General called him by his first name, and not by his rank, or by a simple _Andor._

He’s known Leia Organa his whole life, seeing her whenever she’d make an occasional trip to Fest to see his parents (his father, mostly; the General is much closer to him than she is to Fima’s mother) and then on the handful of times he’d go with his parents to the Core Worlds. For the longest time, the General insisted he call her Leia, while his father insisted he call her Minister Organa, and Fima had swung wildly between both titles. Until he’d joined the Resistance, and she became General Organa.

She is still General Organa to him.

But, perhaps; she is also his peer.

 

* * *

 

When Fima looks back on it later, he will only remember flashes.

Flashes, like the blue lights of the _Raddus,_ piloted by Admiral Amilyn Holdo, jumping to lightspeed and tearing through the First Order fleet in a blaze of blinding light.

Flashes, like the white shine of the salt of Crait, salt Fima brushes off every surface of the Alliance outpost, shaking grains of salt out of old navigational charts and ancient datapads, salt that gets stuck in everyone’s hair, painting them all the same color.

Flashes, like the red soil of Crait, tracking everywhere, sticking to everyone’s boots, until it seems like the Resistance is walking in blood, and that is not a thing Fima ever wants to think about again.

Flashes, like the black ships of the First Order fleet that follow them to the surface.

 

* * *

 

The kyber crystal necklace Fima wears belonged to his late grandmother, his mother’s mother, who died when she was a child. The stories he’s heard of her have been minimal, and brief, just scraps of memory, from a daughter who had barely gotten to know her, a daughter who grows sad when she thinks too much about her.

When Fima had decided to join the Resistance, his mother had sat him down, and reminded him of the importance of the kyber crystal.

She reminded him that it was a beacon of hope to her, that during her dilapidated childhood and bitter adolescence, it had been the only thing she had as an anchor. It staved off some of her loneliness, and grounded her in reality, refusing to allow her to lose herself in her heartache. She wore it all through the war, until she married Fima’s father, and gave the kyber crystal to him as a gesture of her dedication.

Because that’s what it really means to her: a promise to stay.

Giving it to her son had been a symbol of her devotion, a constant reminder for Fima that she was never going to leave him, that she’d be there with him through it all.

Standing in the command room of the Alliance outpost on Crait, Fima grips his kyber crystal necklace and wishes, childishly, that she was actually there, standing next to him.

The Resistance has been utterly depleted by the First Order; there are barely two dozen of them left. Everyone else has either died in the hanger of the _Raddus,_ or on one of the support ships, or in one of the fleeing transports, or in the trenches on Crait, or in an old ski speeder. Everyone left is exhausted, body and soul, and Fima doesn’t know how they’re going to get out of this one.

He holds the kyber crystal in his hand, closes his eyes, and prays.

He prays to whoever might be listening.

_Please. Help us._

A soft breeze sweeps through the command center, and Fima opens his eyes.

He turns his head.

A man in a long cloak has entered the room. A hood covers his head, but Fima knows, without a doubt, who the man is.

Luke Skywalker sits in front of his sister.

It is a private, painful, bittersweet moment, and Fima looks away, searching for something else to focus on.

He catches Kaydel’s eye, noting the salt that dots her blonde hair, the grime on her hands from handling greasy equipment, the tears that have left clean paths over her sooty cheeks. He wonders what he might look like, wonders if she can see the grief and despair he feels.

But Luke Skywalker is here.

And that is not nothing.

They watch as Skywalker stands, pressing a kiss to General Organa’s head, and then turning, to walk out of the room. It feels like everyone holds their breath as he passes, and Fima feels suddenly light and warm, and he wonders if this is how people feel when they think about their gods.

As soon as Skywalker leaves, they all run to look out the long windows of the room.

They watch as Skywalker walks out of the outpost, walking fearlessly towards the First Order, alone and seemingly unprotected. He stops.

Kaydel is not the only one who screams when the First Order begins to fire on him.

The fire lasts barely ten seconds before it stops. Fima braces himself, ready for a smoldering crater and nothing else in sight. He glances at General Organa, and startles at the way her face is smooth and neat. She does not look frightened, or devastated. She is the picture of calm. If anything, she looks almost _amused._

Murmuring races through the room.

Fima turns back, in time to see Skywalker exit the crater, entirely unharmed.

The General smiles.

“Come on,” she calls. “Let’s go down into the hangar.”

 

* * *

 

This time, when Poe takes the lead, he does so with a more confident air, a sharpness in his eyes, the weight of all they’ve experienced in the last couple days on his shoulders.

General Organa’s smile is warm.

Fima automatically moves to the back of the meager group of Resistance soldiers, taking up the post to guard the rest in case the First Order manages to enter the outpost. Poe looks over the others, counting heads, and when he gets to Fima waiting at the back, he grins, and gives Fima an acknowledging nod.

Kaydel, standing near the former stormtrooper Finn (and Fima _still_ has not gotten to introduce himself to him) winks at Fima, and he smiles.

After so long, Fima feels hopeful.

_We can do this._

They run through the outpost, following the crystal foxes, and Fima is definitely going to have to tell Ersa about those--

He nearly trips over his own feet.

_Ersa._

He hasn’t thought about her in hours, too focused on his survival, and the survival of the Resistance.

For the first time, Fima thinks he’s actually managed to treat Ersa like any other soldier.

He’d assumed doing so would leave him ashamed, would make him think he’d failed as her brother.

He realizes now it only means he’s acknowledged who they both are, what they both are here to do: to fight. To win. To save the galaxy. As equals.

They are two soldiers on the same side in a galactic war.

But they won’t always be. A day will come where they will lose those identities.

What they always will be are siblings.

And so, for the first time, his roles as soldier and big brother intersect and run parallel:

He can leave a trail for her to follow.

_Find me, Ersa._

 

* * *

 

One Jedi saves them, and another Jedi rescues them.

Fima only got a glimpse of the girl on D’Qar before she was taking off in the _Millennium Falcon_ to meet Luke Skywalker. It’s only been a few days since that moment, but the girl seems to have aged; she stands taller, with a steely glint in her eyes, confidently guiding the ragged remnants of the Resistance into the freighter.

General Organa is gazing around the freighter with a fond look on her face, running her fingers over every available surface, and everyone leaves her be. Instead, they pass around food, drinks, and supplies, chatting and yelling over one another, sharing in that manic, gleeful delight that comes with escaping certain death.

A starfighter pilot nearly sits on a small, winged creature that emits a squawk of outrage, causing the pilot to yelp, and everyone to laugh. Fima is told the creatures are porgs, brought from Ahch-To; they seem to have settled nicely in the _Falcon,_ making nests out of the stuffing splitting out of the walls, hiding in empty cupboards.

A porg lands on Kaydel’s shoulder, and she grins, gently petting it.

Fima smiles at the sight, and Poe comes up next to him, throwing an arm over his shoulders.

“You did good, kid,” Poe says, and Fima’s grin widens at the praise.

“You, too, Poe.”

Poe shrugs. “Got there in the end.” Before Fima can interject, Poe turns. “Hey! Finn! C’mere.”

Finn wanders over from where he’d been standing at Rose Tico’s bedside; Rose is passed out, but their one remaining medic has assured them that she’ll be okay. Finn’s shirt is sticky with sweat, blood, and salt, but he manages a smile for Poe.

“Finn,” Poe says. “Have you met Fima Andor?”

“Uh, no, I don’t think so,” Finn says, cautiously holding a hand that Fima takes. “Nice to meet you.”

“You, too,” Fima says, warmly. “You’re a hero.”

Finn flushes at the praise, but there is something soft in his eyes; he might actually believe Fima.

“Glad my two protegés have finally met,” Poe declares, and Finn laughs while Fima rolls his eyes. “Kriff, is there any _good_ food here? Chewie, what do you got?”

“Hey, Poe!”

The call comes from Rey. The last Jedi.

“I could use a co-pilot,” she says, jerking her head towards the cockpit.

“Gods, _yes,”_ Poe yells, and everyone in the ship laughs, because Poe Dameron, ace pilot, has spent years talking about how eager he is to fly the _Millennium Falcon,_ pestering General Organa on when her husband might make a visit to the Resistance, legendary freighter in tow.

Now, General Organa shakes her head in a fond sort of way, and Poe runs to the cockpit. Rey turns to follow him, Finn darting to her side. They throw an arm around the other, and disappear into the cockpit after Poe.

A hand wraps around Fima’s wrist. It’s Kaydel, holding a slightly dusty glass of an amber liquid.

“Some kind of Corellian whiskey,” she says, in explanation. “The _Millennium Falcon_ isn’t exactly equipped for this many people. But, I thought, we all deserve a drink.”

“Absolutely,” Fima agrees.

“Chakta sai kae,” Kaydel says, and he repeats the Corellian toast, and they clink their glasses together, throwing back about half the drink in one go.

Fima leans against a wall, letting himself slide to the floor. He hasn’t sat down in hours, and he almost wants to cry at how good it feels to do so now. Kaydel sits next to him, and they’re quiet for a moment, sipping their whiskey, and looking around the ship.

People are passing bottles of alcohol around, swigging straight from the bottle, uncaring of formality, and General Organa throws back three shots of Corellian whiskey in about five seconds, causing murmurs of appreciation. Food is tossed from person to person, porgs jumping into the air to try and intercept it, and the air is thick with talk and laughter, and Fima breathes deeply, taking it all in.

Under him, the _Falcon_ rumbles, and then jolts.

“We’ve made the jump to lightspeed,” Poe calls over the ship comm, and everyone cheers.

Fima shakes his head.

“Where are we even going?” he asks.

He thinks it’s the first time he’s been on a ship and never tried to find out the destination.

Kaydel shrugs, leaning her head against his shoulder. “Home, I guess.”

_Home._

_Where is home?_ Fima wonders.

The Resistance is fractured. They’ve lost nearly everything. They have no ships, no weapons, no rations, no base. Nothing.

Save for people.

Everyone in this ship.

And everyone in the galaxy who will hear the stories of Crait, and turn the dead into legends, Luke Skywalker taller than them all.

They’ll be okay.

Kaydel begins to snore against his shoulder, and Fima smiles, leaning his head back.

_Home._

Home is not a place.

Home is people.

Home is his father’s quiet laugh, his warm smile. Home is his mother’s bright green eyes, her arms holding her son to her.

Home is Ersa’s big brown eyes, her dimpled grin, her wild dark brown hair, her loud laugh, her voice calling his name.

Home is the three of them.

At the end of a very long, difficult day: everyone just wants to go home.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fast and loose with the timeline.
> 
> I did say this was going to be a TLJ story, and if that movie was not your bag, I'm sorry to make you read a chapter that galloped through the movie. I just couldn't figure out a way around it. the good news, if TLJ is not your thing: this is it. Ersa's chapter makes no mention of TLJ. (at the moment, I guess I should clarify; but no plans to include anything.)
> 
> there are current EU stories with Luke, Leia, and Han going to Crait to search for a new rebel base. since Cassian, in the Nonsense universe, stuck close to Leia, I'd say it stands to reason he was there, too.
> 
> I've been trying to write this story to suggest that Fima and Ersa could have been in TFA and TLJ: just slightly out of sight, and out of the camera frame. that was also how I wrote GRAY AREAS: with the idea that Cassian was just there, that he might have just left the room. if you blink, he'll be right there. in a deleted scene, you can find Fima next to Kaydel, and Ersa on the other side of the D'Qar command room. stuff like that. it's comforting.


	4. because you are full of grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are things she must remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've pulled a PARALLAX, in that this final chapter is over twice as long as the ones before it. but this is the end, so. understandable.

The ship is quiet, save for the sound of Nyota impatiently flipping switches, pausing, and then repeating the motions. The flipping becomes more aggressive as the minutes pass.

“Well, they aren’t responding,” she decides, tossing her headset back onto its hook next to her seat.

“No one?” Ersa wonders.

She’s looking out the front transparisteel window, staring down at the green-yellow planet below. Kaddak looks almost like an uninhabited planet from this far out in space, and Ersa thinks about the wayward travelers who might have visited it, hoping for a quiet place to rest and recover from their journeys. She tries to picture the looks on their faces when they breached the planet’s atmosphere, only to discover what it really was.

Lawless. Overcrowded. Anarchic. Impoverished.

Similar to Maz Kanata’s castle, Kaddak is a shelter for those looking to escape the notice of authorities. But unlike Maz Kanata’s castle, there are absolutely no rules. Anyone can visit, and stay as long as they wanted. Murderers, spies, thieves, assailants, assassins, bounty hunters, hit men; they are all here, mixing together in the crowds. Kaddak is not a safe harbor, and even the Resistance, so desperate for recruits and information, avoided the planet at all possible costs.

Poe had once gone on a mission to Kaddak, on General Organa’s request, but he’d had two droids and a fellow pilot as back-up, and half the base monitoring his status, ready to send in support if he needed help.

All that Ersa and Nyota have are each other, a few blasters, a handful of other weapons, and a tip.

_“The key to the future of the First Order,” Bala-Tik says, and when Ersa raises the lightblade, he hurriedly adds, “I don’t know what it is, exactly! It’s just something they think will preserve their future, and something they cannot send one of their official leaders to get, lest they be caught by a New Republic, or Resistance, spy. I only know it’s in the saloon under the black sun, with the man with the blade hand.”_

_The man with the blade hand._

Why not.

“This is a really bad idea,” Nyota murmurs, studying Kaddak below. “Not only are we thinking about going to _Kaddak,_ we’re thinking about going to _the Silver._ The Silver, Ersa! The city built by, and for, criminals! This is madness!”

“It’s a good lead.”

Nyota rolls her eyes. “It isn’t even a _lead._ It’s just what some Guavian Death Gang member told us. He could have been lying.”

“He isn’t smooth enough to lie with a lightblade pressed against his leg,” Ersa mutters.

“We can’t do this without the _Resistance,_ Ersa.”

Silence falls, as Ersa considers Nyota’s point.

The stars are bright outside, but they are easily outshined by the ferocity of Kaddak’s sun. It is a huge white sun, all luminescent fire and brilliant energy, and Ersa cannot look at it for longer than a moment.

She looks, instead, at Nyota, who has always been a kind of sun to her.

“What do you think of, when you think of the future?” Ersa asks.

Nyota blinks. “What do you mean?”

“I think of light,” Ersa says. “I think of… I think of the sun on my face. The Mantooine sun. I think of seeing my shadow get swallowed up in blue sky, and my feet slipping into orange sand. I think of lying in the light. That’s what I picture, when I imagine my future.”

Nyota’s face softens. “Ersa--”

“And you’re there,” Ersa continues. “Right next to me. In the sun. It’s very quiet, and calm. There isn’t any war. No banners flying with the First Order’s symbol. Just you, and me, and the light. We’re so beautiful in the light, Nyota.”

“Ersa--”

“Whatever is below, in the Silver,” Ersa interrupts. “Could very well be part of the future of the First Order. The future that is all that… That warm, familiar light? It cannot survive under the First Order. And I… You know _me,_ Nyota. You know how badly I hope for the light. How I have to believe if I work hard enough, I… I can reach it.”

Nyota bites her lip, and looks away.

“I know it’s stupid,” Ersa says. “I know it could be a trap. I know we should wait for the Resistance. But, Nyota; we don’t even know if we have _time._ If we have _any time._ We have to… We can’t wait. Not for this. Not for that future.”

_We can’t wait._

Ersa cannot afford to _wait._

Silence falls.

Ersa studies Nyota’s face, her light blue eyes. Her eyes are flickering, a sign she’s inwardly debating.

After a moment, she nods.

Ersa smiles, and reaches forward, squeezing her hand.

“Let’s go.”

She watches Nyota as she pilots their ship down, onto Kaddak. There are very few clouds covering the planet, and the Silver, that huge, pinnacle pink crystal, dominates the skyline. Ersa surveys the city as they land, on a dusty plateau outside it, sending clouds of dirt up into the air around their ship.

Nyota brushes her hair over her shoulder.

“We’ll have a look,” she says, firmly. “See if this… This blade hand man is here, or not. With the black sun saloon, or whatever. _Kriff._ But I have one condition, and it is not negotiable.”

“Shoot.”

Nyota gives her a hard look. “Since we cannot get in touch with the Resistance, we must get in touch with someone else. To tell them we’re here, and how long we plan to be here, so if we are not heard from again, they can tell the Resistance, and send a search party.”

It is not an unfair condition to make. It’s a logical one.

But it is one Nyota thinks Ersa will not agree to.

Because it not Nyota’s parents who are connected to high-ranking members of the Resistance. It is not Nyota’s parents who have a grasp of Resistance military policy and protocol. It is not Nyota’s parents who know how to get in touch with multiple members of the Resistance, if they wanted to.

Ersa wars with herself.

She imagines sending a typed message of explanation to her mother, imagines her mother in her office in the orphanage she runs on Fest, imagines her mother using her lunch break to catch up on her messages, imagines her mother finding Ersa’s typed message detailing what may very well be a suicide mission.

Ersa knows she is a cold, cruel daughter. She knows she is not what her parents hoped she would be.

She doesn’t want to prove this to her mother, however.

She’ll give the message to someone who will be able to bear it, because he won’t be surprised by Ersa’s single-minded madness.

“You type it out,” she says, and Nyota raises an eyebrow; she really hadn’t expected Ersa’s willingness on this. “And I’ll connect us to my father’s office.”

 

* * *

 

A month after Ersa joined the Resistance, her father turned up on base.

Ersa had spent that first month undergoing physical fitness tests and learning how the Resistance worked, meeting dozens and dozens of her comrades, being introduced to the higher-ups, exchanging childhood stories in the mess hall. She and Nyota had been assigned a small room in a corner of the base, but they spent so little time in it that it hadn’t hit her yet that it was _theirs._ Nothing really felt like _hers;_ she felt more like a part of something else, like she was just one cog in the machine that was the Resistance. It was not a feeling she disliked.

And then her father arrived.

She didn’t see him land; she only heard about it at dinner, when Retch, a Sullustan hoping to make Black Squadron, asked if she’d introduce him. She laughed, joked about how she would if they were all in the same place at once, and he looked at her funny and said her father was there, on base.

Fima knew, of course.

“Some warning would’ve been nice,” she hissed, when she cornered Fima in the spare clothes room he and a couple friends used to play quiet games of Sabacc.

“He didn’t tell me he was coming,” Fima interjected, defending himself.

_“What?”_

Fima studied her. “Ersa, I need you to consider that he didn’t come here to see _me._ And I need you to understand why you decided to chase after me about this when Papa is, like, two-hundred yards away, and you can yell directly at him.”

When she didn’t reply right away, he added, “I don’t know what you’re mad about, exactly, but it isn’t me.”

And that was fair.

She stewed about it, and then she decided to track down her father.

Once she knew he was on base, he was suddenly all she could hear about. She knew this wasn’t strange, and really, actually very understandable; Cassian Andor was a walking Rebel Alliance legend, with a long and astonishing record of service. But his name wasn’t found in many galactic history books, because the majority of his work had been off-the-radar, behind the scenes kind of work, and work so unpalatable most would pretend it never happened. But it was necessary work, and work that was spread around through word of mouth, stories told across systems, turned into anecdotes exchanged on the Resistance base. Here, he was a hero, an icon; someone to be looked up to, utterly respected.

Ersa didn’t know how to reconcile their adulation with Cassian Andor, her father.

He hadn’t sought her out. Fima had spoken to him shortly after his arrival, and then their father had disappeared into Leia Organa’s office. Ersa didn’t know if he’d called ahead of time to tell her he was coming; she had the feeling that he was one of maybe half a dozen people who could turn up unexpectedly and still get an immediate meeting with the General. But she guessed that was the kind of thing that happened, when you worked in close proximity with someone for a decade, and remained close friends.

She made her way to the General’s office. Steeling herself, she took a breath, and knocked.

“Yes,” the General called.

Ersa opened the door. To her surprise, the General was the only one in the office, poring over a datapad, a steaming mug of caf at her elbow. She raised her eyebrows at the sight of Ersa.

“Private Andor,” she said. “How can I help you?”

It was very obvious that Ersa’s father was not in the room, as the office was mostly a glorified broom closet, but Ersa couldn’t help but do a quick look-around anyway. It was not quick enough to escape the even quicker General’s attention. She smirked.

“Dameron intercepted him,” General Organa said. “It sounded like he was being dragged off to be introduced to the whole squadron.”

“Ah.” Ersa nodded. “Right. Thank you, General.”

Ersa turned to leave, but the General’s voice stopped her.

“He means well.”

Slowly, Ersa turned around. “I’m sorry?”

“Your father.” The General’s mouth quirked in what Ersa guessed was meant to be an amused smile, but came across as a grimace; General Organa looked close to emotional, her eyes a little watery, and Ersa froze on the spot. “I imagine he seems… suffocating, to you. From what I understand, he had a… less than _ideal_ reaction to you joining us here.”

“That’s generous of you,” Ersa said, before she could stop herself. But the General’s smile widened.

“You remind me a bit of myself, Ersa,” the General said, and Ersa could only stare. “When I was your age. So eager to fight, so desperate to get away, away from… From parents who adored me. From a father who was so afraid, who was so worried about me, that he would do anything to prevent me from getting involved in the war. He’d lie to me about his work, and forbid me from seeking out the rebels in the city. And part of me hated him for it. Hated how he treated me so differently from all the other young rebels. Hated the way he’d still refer to me as his _little girl.”_

Ersa swallowed hard, and looked away. The General’s tone was too knowing. She’d be willing to bet a substantial amount of credits the General had heard those same words quite recently.

“I want you to know, Ersa,” the General continued, and Ersa allowed herself to note how unusual it was for the General to use her first name, “That one day, you will look back on this, and you will forgive him for it all. You’ll understand him. And I know that must sound pedantic, or condescending; me, warning you about how you _will_ feel about this, in the future, when you’re older, and have more perspective. But I believe this is a mindset that all young soldiers fall into: this determination to build a better future for the galaxy, at the cost of one for yourself. At the cost of _perceiving_ a future for yourself.”

Ersa didn’t know what to say. She waited.

“Anyway,” the General murmured. “I suppose that this really boils down to teenage girls neglecting to be a little patient with their terrified fathers. Just… Keep an eye on the future, Andor. Think of what your future self may wish to say to him.”

Ersa had the sense that the General meant something other than the fury that boiled on her tongue, the irritation that coated her throat.

She only nodded.

“Good,” the General noted. “When you find him, tell him I expect to see him again before he goes.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ersa said, and she left the room.

She did not pass on the message.

Instead, she ran in to another fairly new recruit, one who had been charged with visiting a nearby system to pick up donated supplies, and she begged the recruit to take her with her.

By the time Ersa came back to base, her father was long gone.

 

* * *

 

The message she leaves at her father’s office is short, and to the point.

_N. and I are on Kaddak. The Silver. Following a tip. Couldn’t get in touch with F. or anyone else. If they call, let them know. Worry in a week. E._

He’ll understand it, which is the point.

She doesn’t know what to make of the lack of response from D’Qar. It’s one thing to think no one in the Resistance has acknowledged their message; they’re a clunky, young, rapid group, and things have been known to slip through the cracks. But it’s a whole other thing for _Fima_ to not reply to her. He’s never not come to her when she’s called.

She can only assume the horror of the destruction of the New Republic government has upended the Resistance, making it an all-hands-on-deck reality on D’Qar. It’s exactly the kind of event Fima would throw himself into rectifying, trying to make better, trying to do _something._

Ersa is doing the same; chasing a lead on Kaddak.

A lead that may not even _be_ a lead.

Ersa tries not to think about that.

Thankfully, she has a lot to focus on.

They leave the ship, and begin the walk to the Silver. She isn’t sure why it’s called the _Silver;_ the city is built around a giant pinnacle-shaped crystal with a distinctly pink sheen, the sun over Kaddak illuminating it even more brilliantly. Ersa cannot look at the thing for long without causing her eyes to hurt, and so she turns her gaze down, to the dusty road leading into the city.

The Silver is crowded with all kinds of people, humans and aliens alike. A small group of Abyssins shove past, their single eyes flickering over the girls’ faces, mossy green skin soaking up the sunlight, as a couple Sakiyans with plum-colored skin loiter outside a blaster shop, smoking cigarettes that emit puffs of neon red smoke into the air. A Cerean is deep in conversation with a couple Ithorians, all three speaking in a language unfamiliar to Ersa, though the tense tone ringing through all three voices is understandable in every system.

As they climb, the streets become narrower, and Ersa tucks her jacket in closer to her body, focusing on the feeling of her lightblade thumping against her thigh. Though the Silver is home to the most cruel and savage of criminals, it’s also home to regular pickpockets and petty thieves, all of whom will be eager to take advantage of two very young and uncertain girls like Ersa and Nyota. The last thing Ersa needs is to be robbed, though part of her is interested in the excuse to get into a street fight.

She’s clamoring, adrenaline pumping through her veins, making her twitchy. Her skin is prickling, that rabid old fear of paranoia, of being watched, and she knows she actually _is_ being watched, of course, and so she lets that reminder flow through her.

_Focus._

_“I only know it’s in the saloon under the black sun, with the man with the blade hand.”_

Ersa isn’t sure how much of that statement is to be taken literally. The man with the blade hand is, apparently, a literal thing, but the saloon under the black sun may not be. Kaddak’s sun would not be called black by any stretch of the imagination, and so Ersa turns her head up, surveying the signs and banners lining the walls of the streets of the Silver, studying the symbols, searching for anything that might look like a _black sun--_

It hits her, then, and she stops so suddenly Nyota runs smack into her.

“What the hell, Ersa--”

Ersa spins, seizing Nyota by the wrist, and dragging her into a grimy side alley.

“The _black sun,”_ she hisses.

Nyota frowns. “Yeah, I remember.”

“It isn’t a _literal_ black sun, Nyota!”

Nyota blinks at her.

The hustle and bustle of the street at the mouth of the alley is suddenly very quiet.

“Oh no,” Nyota breathes.

_The saloon under the black sun._

Ersa smiles, weakly.

 _The saloon under the_ **_B_** _lack_ **_S_** _un._

“It’s just another gang, right?”

“A bit trickier than that,” Nyota murmurs.

The Black Sun: a criminal syndicate that’s been operating in the galaxy for thousands of years, consisting of criminals from all walks of life, responsible for every possible type of crime. The group is involved in hundreds of systems, rigging elections, running smuggling rings and engaging in piracy. Its Intelligence networks are particularly noteable, and ruthless: known to be more accurate and widespread than the Old Republic, and the Empire, and the New Republic. And most certainly the Resistance as well.

“Not our luckiest day,” Ersa comments.

“We can’t just walk into a saloon run by the _Black Sun--”_

“We _have_ to, Nyota!” Ersa hisses, barely managing to keep her voice down. “I told you, we have to move quickly. We’re running out of time. The Resistance isn’t responding--”

“That could be due to any number of things, it doesn’t mean the worst--”

 _“Fima_ isn’t responding.”

That gets Nyota to quiet, her tense eyes softening.

“Ersa…”

“Fima,” Ersa starts, and abruptly stops.

She feels almost like she’s choking on the name, like she can’t force the rest of her words past the sudden lump in her throat, because all the things she could say about Fima are so inconsequential next to the reality that is her brother. She could say a thousand kind and true things about him, and they would not be enough.

Especially coming from someone like Ersa: a gray, cold, thing.

“He’s never…” She swallows. “He answers when I call. He comes back for me. He doesn’t… There’s never been a time where we’ve… The calls we sent were flagged as _critical,_ and Fima would never _not_ respond to such a thing. Not from me.”

Nyota sighs, but her eyes are still soft, and Ersa knows she understands.

Nyota has known Fima for almost as long as she’s known Ersa. She grew up with Fima, getting to know him, watching his transformation from vexing and irritating brother, to mature and thoughtful protector. She’s had a front row seat to these developments, has seen how Fima has doted on Ersa, been patient with her, and kind to her.

So she knows, just as Ersa does, that Fima’s failure to reply is a very, very, bad sign.

Ersa is fighting very hard not to get to the conclusion that Fima’s lack of reply now means he’s dead.

“Right,” Nyota says. “The Black Sun Saloon it is.”

Ersa nods, and turns, leading the way down the grimy street.

As she walks, the memories come, and she lets them run her over.

 

* * *

 

_“What’s it called, again?”_

_Fima’s eyes, her eyes, are so dark, so sad, so apologetic._

_“Melancholia,” he says._

_“This is what Papa has? That’s why he’s sad?”_

_Her thirteen-year-old brother nods, not looking up from his sketchbook, charcoal pencil scratching hard against the paper. Seven-year-old Ersa frowns, biting her lip, and gets up from her position in front of the fireplace, abandoning her model x-wing to do so._

_“Will he get better?” she asks._

_Fima shakes his head. “No.”_

_She considers this._

_“He thinks we’re a lot alike,” she says, and Fima stills. “So do I have it, too? The melan… The sadness?”_

_Fima sighs, and looks at her. “Maybe.”_

_“Oh.”_

_“Don’t…” Fima shakes his head. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing, okay? It’s… Papa lives with it, and you can too. Here, look.”_

_He lifts the sketchbook, turning it to show her._

_And it’s her, the day before, standing in the snow, face turned up to the gray sky. She’s smiling in the picture, charcoal smudges turned dark brown eyes, and her hands are raised, catching snowflakes in her gloves. It is a very good likeness, one that could only have been drawn by someone fond of the subject._

_She steps closer, and lifts her hand, brushing her fingers over her own face._

_Bits of gray flake off, staining her fingers._

_Fima squeezes her hand, and his hands are as gray as hers._

 

* * *

 

Luckily for Ersa and Nyota, they do not have to comb the entirety of the Silver to find the Black Sun saloon. Rather, on Level 45, at the doorway of a cantina known to be a haunt of criminal gangs (namely, Kanjiklub and the Guavian Death Gang) Nyota spots a man with the symbol of the Black Sun syndicate tattooed at the base of his neck.

The two women approach, sidling up on either side of the man.

Up close, Ersa sees the man is young, close to her own age, with skin so pale it’s almost white as snow, and dark blue eyes. He’s skinny, dressed in black clothes that have seen better days, armed with a blaster and likely an assortment of less visible weapons. His tattoo is made obvious both by his pale skin, and the fact his head and face is completely hair-free, including his eyebrows.

Ersa suspects he might actually be younger than her, because the man does not see Nyota’s dagger pressing into the small of his back, poised to stab his kidney, until it’s there, ready to go.

He follows them out of the doorway and to a dark side alley without complaint.

“You’re with the Black Sun?” Ersa demands, without preamble.

The boy blinks.

“Aren’t you observant,” he drawls, an uncoordinated smirk darkening his light features.

Ersa notices how bloodshot his eyes are at the same moment Nyota steps closer to him, and sniffs.

“Spice,” she murmurs, confirming Ersa’s suspicion.

“Great,” Ersa grumbles, because dealing with someone high is exactly what they need right now. She steps closer, seizing the boy by the shoulders. “The Black Sun Saloon. Where is it?”

The boy looks her up and down. There is something scrutinizing in his look, and Ersa is used to suspicious men of all ages and species studying her, parsing out her body and her features. Sometimes they do so as a side effect of attraction, and sometimes they do it because they can sense Ersa for what she truly is:

A threat.

Here and now in the Silver, the boy grins.

“Follow me,” he says, and Ersa does just that.

 

* * *

 

_“I never wanted this for you.”_

_“I know, Papa.”_

_She can see her mother out of the corner of her eye, hovering in the doorway, green eyes dark and sad, and Ersa cannot look at her. Her mother’s sadness is so rarely obvious, and Ersa has tried very hard to not ever be the cause of it, and to see and know she is now is nearly unbearable._

_Looking at her father is also difficult, but the familiarity of his brown eyes, full of sorrow and despair, are as familiar to her as her own reflection. They look the same. In many ways, they are the same._

_Especially now, more than ever._

_“One day,” he whispers, “I hope you will forgive me.”_

_It is only sort of his fault, is something that could’ve happened to her no matter who her father is, or her grandmother was, and so she frowns._

_“For what, Papa?”_

_He smiles, and there is something sinister in there, some dark memory from another life she knows nothing of._

_“For all of it,” he tells his only daughter, twelve years old, recently branded with the same melancholia he carries, the mental illness she will live with forever. He leans forward, and kisses her forehead._

_“For any of it.”_

 

* * *

 

The Black Sun Saloon is a desolate place.

It’s found on Level 58, a level Ersa almost believes is purposefully darker than most other levels, the light coming from dank street lamps that do little but cast shadows everywhere. The boy leads them there, and all attempts at conversation from Nyota have fallen flat, with the boy ignoring her questions, refusing even to tell them his name. Pointedly, Nyota asks for his age, and he gives none.

Ersa isn’t surprised. He’s probably just a new member of the Black Sun.

Teenagers run away all the time.

She should know.

The boy leads them to an unmarked door. Ersa glances up, and spots the flag hanging above it, recognizing the black circle surrounded by another circle made of angular spikes.

The Black Sun.

She stops the boy before he can reach the door. “Hang on.”

He stands still, and watches Ersa as she digs in her inner jacket pocket. She procures a small bag, and shakes out a few small green pills. She seizes the boy’s hand, dropping the pills into his palm.

“Get sober,” she advises. “And then, uh…”

She finds her notebook, the size of her palm, and rips out a sheet from it. The boy stares as she scribbles on it, while Nyota smiles, nodding in approval. Ersa holds the sheet out to the boy.

“This is the contact information for an orphanage on Fest, in the Atrivis Sector,” she explains. “The Atrivis Sector is really far from here, but I… I think you need to be far from here. Just… Just call, and ask for Jyn, and tell her that Ersa gave you her number, and she’ll send someone to come get you. Got it?”

The boy looks at her, and she could be projecting, but she thinks there’s a hint of awareness in his drugged eyes.

But he only turns, and pushes the door open.

It’s just as dark inside as the street outside; maybe darker still. Ersa trudges behind the boy, Nyota trailing her. The saloon is filled with humans, ranging from masked bounty hunters to grungy-looking slicers, from smuggling pilots to scantily clad prostitutes. The species in the saloon are even more diverse, running the gamut from massive Houks (two, sitting in a corner, eight and a half feet tall bodies bent over a table a quarter their size) to Falleen (a man and woman, their red scales reflecting the dim light) to Hutt (one, alone, oozing slime near the long wooden bar) to Cathar (at least four, feline headed, gold skin marred by black stripes). The saloon is just crowded enough to make walking through the space awkward, but not too crowded to prevent all eyes from catching on them, studying the two new women.

Ersa raises her chin, hoping she’s projecting both dissatisfaction and disinterest, like she has a right to be here, and knows exactly what she’s doing.

She looks away from scrutinizing a Rodian to face ahead, only to realize the boy has vanished.

This is neither the time nor the place to panic, and so Ersa diverts her course, going to the bar.

“Two Zadarian brandies,” she says curtly, and the bartender nods.

Nyota makes a face. “You know I don’t like brandy.”

“Zadarian brandy is stiff, it’ll make us look like we mean business.”

“Do we, though?” Nyota mutters, but accepts the glass shoved her way.

The heavy air of the saloon is suddenly interrupted by yells, by chairs scraping roughly back, and Ersa jerks around. Across the room, two Twi’lek men are brawling, fists whirling rapidly, yelling at each other in Ryl. Ersa can’t understand them, but the anger and disgust on their faces is enough.

One man’s fist breaks the other’s nose, sending specks of blood everywhere.

No one in the room so much as flinches.

Fights must be commonplace, so frequent, they’re boring.

Ersa turns on the spot, and surveys the rest of the saloon.

She thinks spotting a man with blades for hands should be fairly easy, but the lights are dim, and many of the customers are wearing jewelry or carrying daggers that reflect the scarce light, so searching for something simply _shiny_ is out of the question. She frowns, eyes dancing from a woman with gold teeth, to a Zabrak with facial tattoos lined with silver, to a Devaronian with gems embedded in his horns, to a man with ears so studded they look liable to fall off his head with their weight.

There is a lot that shines in this grim place.

Nyota, next to her, shines just as brightly, Ersa thinks.

It is Ersa who is cold and gray.

It is Ersa who belongs in the dark.

 

* * *

 

_“He’s trying.”_

_“I know,” Ersa says, and swallows the acid in her tone._

_“Give him some time,” her mother says, voice so pleasant it acts like a balm to the bitterness soaking Ersa’s, and Ersa doesn’t know what to make of her mother’s seemingly endless patience, and wonders if this is how her father has felt for three decades. “This is hard for him.”_

_“It wasn’t for you.”_

_Her mother’s eyebrows rise. “Oh, it was. Is. Believe me. But you and I have a different relationship than the one you and your father have.”_

_“He was so cool and calm about Fima leaving,” Ersa mutters. “But I’m leaving, and he won’t teach me how to fight, won’t show me how to shoot, and he… Mama, he’s ignoring me.”_

_“No, sweetheart,” her mother breathes, and they were supposed to be washing the dishes, but she ignores the pan in her hands to reach for Ersa’s hand in the hot, soapy water. “No, he’s… He’s grieving.”_

_“I’m not dead yet.”_

_The warmth and compassion in her mother’s face disappears almost violently, her full mouth hardening, eyebrows slanting sharply. “Don’t you dare. Don’t ever say that shit to me.”_

_“Sorry,” Ersa mumbles, chastised, shame washing over her._

_Be gentle with Mama, her mind reminds her._

_Her mother cried for weeks after Fima left for the Resistance. Ersa doesn’t want her to do the same for her. But she knows it might be inevitable._

_“Why is Papa grieving for me, then?” Ersa asks._

_“Because you’re about to do something that will change you,” her mother explains, softness returning, like the sun rising over the Festian mountains. “It will… The war will ask so much of you, and he remembers what the war did to him, what he became, and he… He is so scared, Ersa. We both are.”_

_“I know that,” Ersa says. “But I’m still going.”_

_Her mother smiles, lifting a water-soaked hand out of the sink to brush Ersa’s dark curly hair out of her eyes. Ersa and her mother are the same height, but Ersa’s skin is browner, her hair darker. Sometimes Ersa feels like she is simply the darker version of her mother, both physically and mentally; with her perpetual sadness, her constant anger, her viciousness._

_“I know,” her mother says. “So I will teach you to fight.”_

_Ersa stares._

_This is unexpected._

_“Mama,” she whispers._

_“You’ve got a body type similar to mine,” her mother notes. “Or, I should say how mine used to be. Time’s changed me a bit. But I remember how I used to fight. How I’d move during dirty street brawls, and how I’d hit stormtroopers. I’ll teach you how to use your height to your advantage, and how to use your weight against your assailant. Your father can’t teach you that. But I will.”_

_Ersa is more touched than she knows how to handle. She can only nod, suddenly grateful._

_“Thanks, Mama,” she says._

_Her mother smiles, stepping forward, and wrapping her arms around Ersa in a hug._

_“Just remember,” she says, “Who you are. Remember to let yourself breathe, remember to… Remember yourself. And me. No matter what you do, no matter where you go… You’re my best girl. First and foremost. Do not forget that.”_

 

* * *

 

They split up, with Nyota moving towards one side of the bar and Ersa to the other. Moving further into the room is like moving further into a cave, the walls dark and weirdly slick in places, and if Ersa blinks, she thinks she sees smudges of dark red against the heavy wooden panels, and feels her stomach turn.

She moves through the crowd, eyes looking around casually, when a hand grabs her elbow.

She only barely manages to prevent herself from jumping a foot in the air. She turns on the spot, fist raised and ready, only to come face to face with the boy who’d led them here.

His eyes are still bloodshot, but there is a hint of clarity there that had been missing before. He’s taken the pills she gave him.

He jerks his head to the side, and once again, she follows.

He leads her to the fresher in the back, ducking under the curtain separating this area from the rest of the saloon. The music is still pumping loudly through the air, some retro Outer Rim tune, but it’s just quiet enough for Ersa to hear the boy’s hiss:

“You need to leave.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You don’t belong here,” the boy says, and his voice is hard and shielded, and he’s practically a whole new person. “You’re practically crawling out of your skin. You don’t know a single person here. So. What the hell are you even doing here, anyway?”

Ersa scowls. “I’m looking for something.”

“What?”

It is stupid, and probably dangerous, but she offers the truth: “The man with the blade hand.”

Instantly, the boy stills.

“... Oh, no.”

“No?” Ersa repeats.

The boy’s eyes look a little wild, like he’s somehow taken spice again in the last ten seconds. “You don’t wanna meet him.”

“I have to. He has… I have to.”

“Nothing is worth meeting him.”

“I _have_ to. He has something I want.”

Unexpectedly, the boy relaxes. There is something kinder in his face now, and he looks five years younger, and she wonders how old he actually is.

“I see,” he murmurs. “Well, tell me their name. Maybe I can find them.”

She frowns. “What?”

“Is it your brother, or your sister? Cousin? Uh, friend? Or, wait, is it someone related to the girl you came in with?”

She’s speechless.

A cold sweat is working its way up her spine.

She looks at the boy’s neck, at the edges of the Black Sun symbol tattoo, and she suddenly realizes why it’s there, and what it really means.

“He’s a trafficker,” she breathes. “The man… He’s a trafficker. He traffics people. _You.”_

It is the boy’s turn to be speechless, but Ersa isn’t done.

“That’s why you don’t want me to meet him,” she realizes. “And why you brought us here so willingly… You traffic people, too.”

 _“No,”_ the boy hisses. “I mean. I don’t want to. But I… The spice, it… He gets us high, and then he talks, and we… I just…”

“It makes you suggestible,” Ersa surmises. “You do what he wants.”

“Yeah. But I’m… You should go.”

The boy looks so young, and so tired, and Ersa has to close her eyes.

_“Something the First Order wants,” Bala-Tik says, and when Ersa raises the lightblade, he hurriedly adds, “I don’t know what it is, exactly! It’s just something the First Order wants, to preserve their future. I only know it’s in the saloon under the black sun, with the man with the blade hand.”_

The boy assumed she was here for someone.

The First Order must be looking for someone, too.

Or multiple someones. Or as many unknowns as they can get their hands on.

Like children and teenagers lost in human trafficking, never to be found again.

The fury rolls through her.

She’s shaking, breathing hard, and feeling everything too much, and all at once.

 

* * *

 

_“I’m leaving. Tomorrow.”_

_Her father’s head jerks up at that, looking away from the Mantooian dictionary he’d been frowning at to stare at her. She notices the bags under his eyes, the lines on his forehead, and she thinks he looks very tired and so old._

_“Thought you might want to know,” she mutters. “I’ll be on D’Qar sometime tomorrow night.”_

_“Of course I want to know,” her father breathes, and there is such hurt and anxiety in his tone it makes her skin crawl._

_“Cool,” she says, and turns to leave his office._

_“Ersa.”_

_She sighs, but turns around._

_Her father stays seated at his desk, but he leans forward, resting his hands on the desktop._

_“You don’t have to do this,” he says, eyes downcast._

_“I know,” Ersa snaps._

_“I’d like you to remember that if you want to leave, you can, anytime--”_

_“I really can’t--”_

_“We’ll come get you--”_

_“You won’t have to--”_

_“I…” He sighs, shoulders sagging. “I only want you to remember you have a way out.”_

_Ersa thinks she’s been remarkably cool lately, has taken her father’s refusal to teach her how to fight with grace and restraint, but all of that goes out the window in that moment._

_“Why do you think I’ll need a way out?”_

_Her father looks at her. “With the melancholia--”_

_“You had it too, in the war, don’t you remember?”_

_“Vividly.”_

_“And you made it through--”_

_“But I very nearly didn’t, Ersa!” he insists, and he stands at that, and he’s taller than her, but she doesn’t shrink back. “It was awful, and difficult, and I never, ever wanted you to have to make this choice, and the fact is: it is not a choice you_ have _to make. Or, at least: one where you don’t have to make the same choice I did. I need you to take your time, and think everything through carefully, and not run blindly into war.”_

_“You think we’re the exact same,” Ersa snaps. “That I’m exactly like you. But I’m not, Papa.”_

_“I know that--”_

_“I don’t think you do.”_

_“I’m worried you’ll make mistakes--”_

_“Like everyone else! Everyone makes mistakes, Papa--”_

_“But you aren’t everyone else, Ersa.”_

_Her lip curls. “I know. I’m Cassian Andor’s daughter. I’m the daughter of a kriffing Rebel Alliance hero, of a spy, and a soldier--”_

_“That isn’t what I--”_

_“You’re worried I’m going to turn into you, aren’t you?” she says, and she’s yelling, and she isn’t sure when that happened. “You’re worried I’m going to become this, this… This shell of a person! Someone who has to drag themselves through the day, someone whose wife and son are barely enough to keep him happy, someone whose daughter is going to make the same stupid, horrible decisions. But I’m not, okay? I can be better, and do better. I’m not_ you.”

_He stares at her, and there is no small trace of shock in his eyes._

_“I am… I am angry,” Ersa breathes. “I am so angry, and upset, and I know I shouldn’t blame you, or Mama, or Fima, but I… It’s your genes, and it was Fima leaving, and I… And I’m living with that, okay? This is my life. I get to make it. I get to figure out who I am. I’m not letting biology decide who I am. I’m not letting_ you _decide who I am. And to do that, I need to leave, and I need to do what’s right for me. I need to figure out how I can survive. I need to be away from you.”_

_“Ersa--”_

_“Good night, Papa.”_

_She turns, and leaves the office, slamming the door behind her._

_She runs home._

_The house is empty, her father back at his office, her mother at the orphanage, and Fima--_

_Fima, away at war._

_She grabs her already packed bag,_

_She takes an earlier flight, the first going Galactic South._

_She does not come back._

 

* * *

 

She follows the boy further into the saloon.

Smoke fills the air, smoke from various pipes and hookahs, smoke that is acidic, smoke that is artificially fruit-flavored, smoke that comes in all shades of colors. It is all Ersa can do to keep track of the boy’s back, following that white head, that black tattoo.

Nyota is still in the front of the saloon.

Ersa had wanted to keep her movements subtle, and so she had decided against trying to get Nyota’s attention from across the room. She thinks Nyota will notice her absence, sooner rather than later, and trusts Nyota to search her out back here.

She needs to focus.

_Be calm, be calm, be calm._

She closes her eyes.

_“We’ll go slow.”_

_Ersa groans theatrically, and urges her board on, gliding over the ice. Fima’s hand slips out of hers, and she cackles, delighted by the speed, the thrill of ice-boarding._

_“Look, Fima!” she calls, and she hears him break into a run behind her._

_“Ersa!”_

_“Fima, look!” she yells, giggling, delighting in the ice vanishing under her board._

_“Slow down, Ersa! Wait! Ersa, wait!”_

The boy touches her arm, and she opens her eyes, dragging herself back to the present.

“There.”

She follows his gaze, and spots a man sitting at a table in the very back of the saloon. The man is sprawled, like he doesn’t have a care in the world, and absolutely no fears. She sees he has black hair tied back in a messy bun, face dotted with dark stubble, skin slightly less pale than the boy’s. He’s dressed in shades of grays, blasters on either side of his hips, a glass of an amber liquid in front of him.

And, protruding from his right wrist, where a palm should be, is a disk of silver steel.

And at the end of the steel, like fingers, are five razor-thin, razor-sharp, blades.

The man with the blade hand, indeed.

Her hands clench into fists at her sides.

“I don’t know why you’re here,” the boy mutters, leaning down so she can hear his whisper. “But it isn’t worth it. I promise you that.”

“Introduce me,” Ersa says, her voice as hard as the steel that makes up the man’s hand.

The boy gives a soft sigh. “What was your name, again?”

Perhaps it is because she is in the Silver, a place where it’s best to be unknown.

Or perhaps it is because she is so uncomfortably aware of her melancholia, perhaps it is because she has spent so much time thinking of the father whose heart she broke when she left home, perhaps it is because she has been wondering why her brother has failed to hear her. Perhaps it is because of all three of these things that has her reaching out to the name that connects them all.

Because to the boy, she says, spitting the name like it’s a curse,  “Serafima.”

He nods once, and leads her further into the room.

The man with the blade hand glances up as they approach, and his angular features seem to become more aggressive, turning his face into crevices of shadow, and Ersa lifts her chin defiantly.

“What is this?” the man asks, staring at her, but his question is for the boy.

“Master,” the boy intones, and Ersa’s blood, already boiling, scalds her bones. “Serafima. Sixteen.”

The man--she will not call him _Master--_ gets to his feet. She sees now that he is unusually tall, nearly two feet taller than her, and she has to tilt her head back to look at his face. The boy shrinks at her side, and she does not blame him for taking several steps back, where he somehow manages to make his pale face hide in the shadow of the man.

“You speak?” the man asks.

“When spoken to,” Ersa replies.

“I imagine,” the man grunts, and his accent is far less sharp than his face and hand. She thinks it is still an Outer Rim accent, but as to his homeworld, she has no idea. “What brings you to the Silver, Serafima?”

“For work,” Ersa says, and it is not a lie.

The man begins to make a slow circle around her, and she fights to remain still, even as her skin crawls, even as she feels uncomfortable and nervous.

And angry.

Always angry.

“You’ll do,” the man says, and returns to his seat.

“For what?” Ersa asks, and she’s proud of how even her voice is, how she’s managed to smother her Festian accent.

The man only offers her a crooked grin. He pulls a datapad from his jacket, and Ersa looks down at it.

Everything gets very quiet.

She does not see a list of names.

What she sees is a list of bodies.

_Human male. Fourteen._

_Chiss male. Twelve._

_Felucian female. Sixteen._

_Twi’lek female. Eleven._

_Human male. Thirteen._

_Human female. Nine._

_Iktochi male. Eleven._

And on, and on, and on.

To this list, he adds: _Human female. Sixteen._

“Well,” he says, running a hand over stubble. “Then, I guess--”

He breaks off, stunned by the sucker punch Ersa lands on his cheek.

Ersa is breathing hard, like she’s run ten miles, and wants to run some more.

Running is about the only thing she is truly good at.

Running is all she does.

 

* * *

 

_“I’m enlisting.”_

_Her father does not look up. “No.”_

_“I’m seventeen, Papa, I’m of age--”_

_“Fima left for the Resistance when he was eighteen,” her father replies, voice smooth. Over his shoulder, her mother is still, looking out the window at the gray snow. “You can wait until then.”_

_“But I can go now,” Ersa says. “And I want to.”_

_He finally looks up. “Why do you want to go?”_

_“Because I meet the age requirements, and I’m healthy, and--”_

_“No; I mean, why do you want to fight?”_

_She doesn’t know why, but the question takes her aback._

_“Because the First Order must be defeated,” she says, slowly. “Because the Resistance needs help. I’m a good mechanic and engineer, I can bring those skills. And you can teach me to fight. I’m ready.”_

_Her father studies her, looking into her brown eyes, and Ersa thinks they have never looked more alike._

_“You can’t run from this,” he says, and whatever she’d expected him to say; it hadn’t been that._

_“What?”_

_“The melancholia. Throwing yourself into the war. You can’t hold it back that way. It will follow. It will worsen.”_

_“The war gives me a purpose, a_ noble _purpose. It is a good thing to do, Papa.”_

_“There are better things to do.”_

_“For the galaxy? I don’t think so.”_

_“No. For you.”_

 

* * *

 

It does not take long for the man with the blade hand to recover from the punch.

He does not seem mad, or like he’s in pain. He only looks surprised.

“How strange,” he murmurs. “Why are you so angry, girl?”

“You traffic children,” Ersa hisses. “You steal them, and exploit them--”

“You were already angry when you came to me,” the man says, voice smooth, and he does not sound like a man so recently punched. He gets to his feet, and he is so massive, so tall, but Ersa does not shrink away. “Look at you, at your fire. So righteous. This is not a place for the righteous.”

“Oh, I think it is.”

The man smiles, and it is a smile that is all teeth.

For a moment, he looks like her.

“You think you’re fearless,” he comments. “But you are afraid. So afraid.”

“I’m not scared of _monsters.”_

“Look at the way you hold yourself,” he says, and he steps closer, and Ersa finds herself stepping back. The boy has vanished. “You’re crawling out of your own skin. You hold your hands in fists. You tremble. You avoid touching your face, your hair. Like you are a stranger in your own body. Like you are desperate to escape your own skin. Like you cannot handle what you are. You are not afraid of me, girl. You are afraid of yourself. What a tragic thing that is.”

_Tragic._

 

* * *

 

Why does tragedy exist?

 

_“You don’t have to treat me like I’m made of glass.”_

_“I know. But I worry--”_

_“And you don’t have to worry, either. Fima. I need you to remember I’m just another soldier here, okay? I don’t like it when you treat me differently.”_

_“I’m trying.”_

_“Try harder.”_

 

Because you are full of rage.

 

_But she feels that burn in her chest, thinking of the Guavian Death Gang and how they help the First Order, and in the next moment, she’s ignited the blade, and is tearing the control panel apart._

_Charred bits of metal fall around her boots, while sparks and embers fly through the air, passing her face, a couple landing in her clothes. She moves quickly, and ferociously, hacking at everything she can reach, turning useful technology into burnt waste, until nothing is recognizable, and everything is in its wrong place._

 

Why are you full of rage?

 

_“One day,” he whispers, “I hope you will forgive me.”_

_It is only sort of his fault, is something that could’ve happened to her no matter who her father is, or her grandmother was, and so she frowns._

_“For what, Papa?”_

_He smiles, and there is something sinister in there, some dark memory from another life she knows nothing of._

_“For all of it,” he tells his only daughter, twelve years old, recently branded with the same melancholia he carries, the disease she will live with forever. He leans forward, and kisses her forehead._

_“For any of it.”_

 

Because you are full of grief.

 

* * *

 

Ersa is young, and scrappy.

She is short, but she knows how to use her height to her advantage, as her mother taught her.

But some monsters are just too big.

The man with the blade hand takes her punches carelessly, like he is only being pelted by rain.

The table gets overturned, and no one in the saloon does a thing.

This is just another fight, to them.

Ersa dodges and drops, and she’s growling, her rage and sorrow made manifest, and the man with the blade hand makes no noise, moving soundlessly, advancing on her, until Ersa is backed into a corner with no escape in sight.

She ignites her lightblade, and sinks it into the man’s stomach.

This causes a reaction.

He shouts, his face twisting first with shock, and then with fury.

And this is not a fury Ersa knows.

Her fury is her sorrow. Her fury is her grief. Her fury is her melancholia.

It is not actually fury.

It has always been grief.

Grief for what has become of her, grief for the loss of the self she had known and loved, grief that the melancholia makes her desperate to fight, desperate to escape the sorrow to the point of self-loathing, to the point of running suicide missions. Grief for the father whose heart she broke, grief for the mother who has carried them all for so long, grief for the brother who has tried so hard, so hard.

The whole time, it’s been grief.

But the man with the blade hand; that is fury.

He lifts his hand.

_“Ersa!”_

Ersa looks under his arm.

Nyota is on the other side of the room, the boy beside her. The boy’s pale face is dread personified. Nyota’s blue eyes are wide, horrified, and Ersa can only look at her.

 _You were right,_ she thinks.

Brutality is not her. She is not cruel, or unkind. She is not even cold.

She’s just sad, and looking for a place to put her sadness, somewhere she can put it and then run away from it. Somewhere that is not her.

She realizes, in a split-second, that she always had a place to put it all.

Nyota, with her light, her warmth.

_I'm in love with you._

Her mother, with her patience, her adoration.

_I have always loved you._

Her father, with his similar grief, his similar pain.

_I forgot how much I love you._

Her brother, with his neverending kindness, his devotion.

_I loved you first._

Brown eyes, her eyes, _Fima--_

_I am sorry I’m like this._

_Forgive me._

And then the five razor-sharp blades tear through her face.

 

* * *

 

There are things she must remember.

 

* * *

 

_The snow is falling._

_These flakes are thin, and slow, and almost white. It’s a rare summer storm on Fest, meaning it is barely a storm at all, but a flurry of snow that falls lazily from gray clouds._

_Ersa stares at the sky above for a moment, before looking down again. The tundra is wide, and massive, lonely and empty as far as the eye can see. A mass of brilliant white snow under a pitch black sky. It is breathtakingly silent._

_Movement behind her breaks it, and she turns around._

_Eleven-year-old Fima is building a snowman, his artist hands carefully carving out perfect spheres to make the snowman’s body. His face is tense, and he’s biting his lip, focused intently on his task._

_“Fima,” Ersa whispers._

_Her father stands on the other side of the snowman, propping it up for Fima. He looks somewhat amused, his eyes crinkling in a familiar, warm way, his smile hidden behind the scarf wrapped over the lower half of his face._

_“Papa,” Ersa breathes, and begins to walk to them._

_Her mother sneaks up behind her father, and thrusts a handful of snow down the back of his sweater. Her smile is wide, and true, and she’s bundled up more than the others, a hat tugged down over messy brown hair._

_“Mama,” Ersa says, voice trembling, and she begins to run._

_Ersa’s father yelps, and spins on the spot, grabbing a fistful of fresh snow from the ground, and her mother shrieks._

_“No, Cass, don’t you dare--”_

_He seizes her around the waist, and shoves the snow against her face. She laughs, brushing bits of ice off her face, and he leans down and kisses her cold red cheek._

_Ersa slows, smiling at the sight._

_Fima rolls his eyes, and turns his back on the sight of his parents, and Ersa steps to the side to see what he is looking at._

_And there, standing four feet away from him, crouched in the snow, drawing doodles with her fingers, is five-year-old Ersa._

_“Come help,” he says, and Ersa watches her younger self go to him._

_Ersa follows her._

_She always goes after Fima._

_“Hold this,” he instructs, and younger Ersa does, though the snowman is much taller than her. She turns her face up to watch as Fima crafts the snowman’s head, and this angle allows her to see the night sky over them, that dark Fest sky, with the clouds somewhat parted._

_Ersa feels tears slide down her cheeks, wistfulness and loss brimming up in her, spurred on by the open joy and curiosity in her younger self’s face._

_“Fima, look!”_

_He follows her gaze._

_“Stars,” he breathes._

_Her parents have vanished, leaving only the two Andor siblings, a half-built snowman, miles of open and empty white tundra, and a brilliantly black, star-lit sky._

_“They’re so bright,” five-year-old Ersa says._

_“Stars are always bright, Ersa,” Fima says. “Especially in the dark, surrounded by so much black. That’s how we see them best. Some things can only shine in darkness.”_

_Five-year-old Ersa nods._

_Eighteen-year-old Ersa repeats her brother’s words._

_“Some things can only shine in darkness.”_

_Fima looks at her, and it’s like he can see_ her, _this broken mess that is his sister._

_He can see her._

_He always has._

(There are things she must remember.)

_“Ersa.”_

 

* * *

 

She wakes up.

The light is clouded, and gray, and it takes her a moment to realize this is because she is only seeing out of her right eye.

She lifts a shaking hand, and presses it to the left side of her face. She feels heavy bandages on her fingertips, and the skin underneath the bandages, her left cheek, her chin, her eyebrow, her forehead; they feel nothing.

“Ersa.”

It’s Nyota, of course.

It always is.

Nyota leans over her, taking care to appear in a space where Ersa can see her.

“Hi,” she breathes.

“What happened?” Ersa asks, her voice hoarse.

The movement makes the left side of her mouth pull oddly, but it doesn’t hurt.

“The man with the blade hand almost ripped your face off,” Nyota says. “You were… There was so much blood. He backed off, and left you on the floor. Spice and I got you up, and took you to a medical outpost a couple floors up in the Silver.”

“Spice?”

“The boy,” Nyota clarifies. “He doesn’t have a name. But I had to call him _something.”_

“Right,” Ersa says.

“That was, um… Six days ago.”

Ersa’s one good eye widens.

“The doctor got your face cleaned up,” she says. “Put you on some heavy-duty pain meds, and antibiotics to prevent infection. We’re not sure what the… the extent of the damage is yet. The bacta he had, it’s old. It’ll… you know, knit your face back together, but there will be scarring. And we don’t know about your eye.”

“Oh.”

Nyota’s face is so pained, so apologetic, and it is too much, too much.

Ersa sits up, and throws her arms around her.

Nyota remains stiff for a moment, before she gasps a sob, and hugs Ersa tightly.

“I was so scared,” she whispers, choking on her tears. “I had to watch as he shredded your face, and then you weren’t moving, and I had to turn you over, and… Blood, so much blood. I thought you were going to bleed out before I could get you to a doctor. And then… Kriff, Ersa, your _face._ Why didn’t you wait for me? Why didn’t you… _Why?”_

_Why did we go to the Silver without waiting for the Resistance?_

_Why did you meet the man with the blade hand alone?_

_Why did you attack him?_

_Why are you so angry?_

_Why are you running?_

“I’m sorry,” Ersa whispers. “I’m not… I’m not okay, Nyota. I… I am so angry, and so sad, and I can’t… I need help.”

Nyota is already nodding.

“Then I’ll help you,” she says. “We all will.”

“I want to…”

Ersa closes her one good eye.

“I want to go home.”

 

* * *

 

Nyota drops her off on Fest.

She offers to go with Ersa, to stay while Ersa recovers from her injuries, but Ersa sees the wildness behind Nyota’s eyes, the way her voice shakes, and so she sends Nyota home, to her own parents, to Mantooine.

“Call me when you’re home,” Nyota insists. “And tell me how you’re doing, how your face is healing. And then I’m gonna want to talk to your parents, to make sure you aren’t downplaying anything for my sake.”

“I’ll tell you how I’m feeling,” Ersa says.

And at long last, she will.

She’ll tell the truth. All of it.

“I love you,” Ersa says, and it is not the first time she’s said it, but she says it now while allowing herself to feel everything. Sorrow, pain, loss, grief, love, adoration. She feels it all. She means it all.

Nyota nods. “I love you, too.”

Ersa has not been on Fest for over a year, almost two, but it looks the same.

The streets of Fulcra are full of people, children clinging to parents’ hands, businessmen chatting as they walk, vendors selling food and wares on the sidewalks. The snow is falling, of course, and it is gray, as always, but it’s home.

It is warm, and welcoming, in its own way, in a way that is exclusively Fest.

She keeps the hood of her jacket up, hiding her heavily-bandaged face behind the hood and her wavy hair. The doctor had to shave some of her hair off to get to the slashes, giving Ersa an off-kilter look that would be strange if the damage to the rest of her face was not so obvious and horrific. She studies the people she passes, vaguely recognizing a few from her childhood, and her heart is so full.

Home, home, home.

Almost.

Home, of course, is not simply a place.

She goes downtown, to an office building near the Mantooian Embassy. She walks inside, and climbs the stairs to the second floor.

This office is mostly empty, save for a handful of people, Mantooian and Festian, but they’re all too busy with their work, too caught up in speaking with one another in Mantooian and Festian, and they do not look up to see the girl who walks through the space, going to the office at the end of the hall.

She knocks.

“Come in,” a voice calls from inside.

She opens the door.

Her father is looking down at his desk, studying a datapad, muttering to himself in Mantooian. His office is small, but organized and neat, and Ersa studies the desktop, and spots the hologram picture on the side of it, next to a cup of Festian tea.

In the picture, her father, mother, brother, and younger self smile.

She swallows, hard, and speaks.

“Hi, Papa.”

Her father stills.

Slowly, he looks up.

Her father is a brave, strong man. He is someone who has been through so much, seen the worst of the galaxy, and survived it all. He will do what he needs to do, what he believes is the correct thing to do, and will not complain. He can be emotionless, and expressionless.

He is none of those things at the moment.

His brown eyes are full of tears.

She knows her eyes, or her one good eye, are identical to his in every possible way.

“Ersa,” he croaks, and she nods, and begins to weep.

He’s in front of her in the next second, hugging her tightly, and she cries, and clings to him.

He smells like he always does, like Festian spice tea, like ash from a fireplace, like frost, like all the things she has ever loved, and he holds her as she sobs, and she can feel him shaking, and she knows he’s crying, too.

“I’m sorry,” she gasps.

“No,” he whispers. “No, Ersa. Don’t be. I’m the one who has to apologize.”

_“One day,” he whispers, “I hope you will forgive me.”_

_“For what, Papa?”_

_“For all of it. For any of it.”_

She doesn’t think he has to apologize for his sadness, for this thing they both carry. But she also knows him.

He’s like her.

She knows what she would want to hear.

“I forgive you,” she says, and his breathing becomes more even.

He gathers himself together, and steps back to look at her. He places one hand on her cheek, while the other flutters awkwardly, taking in the bandages that cover the other half of her face.

“What’s happened?” he asks.

“Too much,” Ersa croaks, and he nods, and does not press further.

“I am… I am very glad to see you.”

“I’m sorry,” she says again, and before he can interrupt, she continues. “You have been so good to me, so supportive, and I have thrown it back in your face. You’ve only ever wanted to protect me, and keep me happy, and I… I won’t let you. I decided it meant you didn’t respect me, or trust me, but it only meant… It meant you loved me, and wanted more for me. Wanted me to have a better life than you have had.”

He nods. “Yes.”

“I’m so sorry.”

A small grin breaks his face.

“Ersa,” he says. “What is the point of being a parent if you don’t know your child is going to break your heart?”

She hiccups a laugh, though she knows he’s serious.

He pulls her to him again.

“There is nothing to forgive,” he says. “You, coming home; that is the only thing I have ever wanted from you.”

 

* * *

 

Her mother does not wait for them to reach the house. As soon as they turn the street corner, and the house comes into view, her mother is out, running through the snow, coat-less. Ersa freezes on the spot as her mother runs towards her, and she sees her mother’s frantic green eyes just before she throws herself on her daughter.

“Ersa,” she gasps. _“Ersa.”_

“Mama,” Ersa manages, and then she is crying again.

Her father takes a step back, letting the two of them cry on each other, and Ersa presses her nose into her mother’s shoulder, and she thinks of how her mother has never demanded anything of her, how she has only made herself available, how she taught Ersa how to braid her hair and how to fight, and everything in between, the difficult and the practical.

She thinks that’s a good summary of her mother: difficult, and practical.

Ersa’s got _difficult_ down. Maybe, someday, she can be _practical_ , like her mother, as well.

She thinks she would like to be more like her.

“Oh, sweetheart,” her mother says, leaning back to grab her by the shoulders. Her eyes widen at the bandage on Ersa’s face, but she chooses to ignore it for the moment, and Ersa is sure this is no small feat. “We were so worried.”

“I’m sorry, Mama.”

“You’re here now.”

Her mother wraps her arm around her, and Ersa does the same, and her father follows them to the house.

“We heard about what happened to the Resistance,” her mother says, and Ersa has no idea what she’s talking about. “We were worried you might have gone back to D’Qar and been caught, or that you got into some other trouble. Fima thought--”

“Fima?”

Ersa stops in the snow.

“Fima’s alive?” she asks.

“Course,” her mother says, exchanging an uncertain glance with Ersa’s father. “He got here a few days ago. We’ve been trying to get a hold of you.”

“He didn’t…” Ersa starts, and stops.

The front door of the house opens.

Fima steps outside, brown eyes wide. He looks the same, wavy brown hair covering his ears, skinny frame, round face. And he’s looking at her as he always has; with love, with worry, with astonishment.

The fact that Ersa Andor exists, the fact she lives with melancholia; it is a remarkable thing.

“Ersa,” Fima calls, but she’s already running.

She sprints through the snow, and leaps into her older brother’s arms.

“Fima,” she gasps, and she’s smiling.

 

* * *

 

Ersa does not believe in moving slowly.

She does not believe in taking her time, in being patient, in studying the situation for long. She does not believe in meandering, in taking unnecessary steps, in double-checking her work. She believes in moving quickly. She believes in taking action.

She believes in running.

In the early hours of a morning, with her mother and Fima asleep, when it is just her and her similarly insomniac father sitting in the kitchen, she looks at him.

“In the war,” she begins, and he looks up from his tea. “You were running from your melancholia.”

He nods.

“It wasn’t until I was… thirty-seven, or so, that I knew what it was,” he murmurs. “I thought I was just sad, anxious, cold. I had fought in the war my whole life, so these things felt inevitable. But when I stopped fighting, and remained the same… That was worrying. That was when a psychiatrist told me about melancholia.”

“So, when you tell me to go slowly…”

“It’s very easy to throw yourself headfirst into something as consuming and busy as a war,” he says. “It gives you a purpose, makes you believe you are doing difficult, but important work, and there is so little time to be self-reflective. It helps you make sense of your sadness, believe there is a reason for it, that you are not crazy for feeling this way. It was a perfect outlet for me. It sucked me in. I never learned how to… How to cope with the melancholia, or be _me,_ without the war. In many ways, I’m still learning.”

Ersa looks into her own mug of tea.

Her father reaches out, and takes her hand.

“I always thought I was running out of time,” he says. “But here I am, older than my mother, than my grandfather, ever got to be. It’s possible to live a long life with the melancholia, Ersa. If you do not let it take your life over for you. If you only listen to one thing I say, let it be that. Don’t let the war, and your melancholia, take you away from _you.”_

“Take my time,” Ersa repeats. “Remember to figure out who I am without the melancholia.”

_“Just remember,” she says, “Who you are. Remember to let yourself breathe, remember to… Remember yourself. And me. No matter what you do, no matter where you go… You’re my best girl. First and foremost. Do not forget that.”_

_“But I very nearly didn’t, Ersa!” he insists, and he stands at that, and he’s taller than her, but she doesn’t shrink back. “It was awful, and difficult, and I never, ever wanted you to have to make this choice, and the fact is: it is not a choice you_ have _to make. Or, at least: one where you don’t have to make the same choice I did. I need you to take your time, and think everything through carefully, and not run blindly into war.”_

_“Slow down, Ersa! Wait! Ersa, wait!”_

They’ve been trying to tell her this for years, and she’s never listened. Never wanted to listen.

Until now.

“How did you get better?” she wonders. “I mean… You left the war. And then what?”

He smiles.

“I went searching for brightness,” he says. “Light to be close to. I went to someone who was so bright, it was stunning. She shone so brightly from the second I met her, and I’ve never found a light like that since.”

“Mama.”

“Yes,” he confirms, still smiling. “So; you find a light, and you cling to it.”

“Nyota’s pretty bright,” Ersa says.

“She is,” he agrees. “But I was also thinking of someone else. Someone who has known you since the very beginning.”

Ersa knows.

“Fima,” she says.

“He’s bright, like your mother,” her father says, his smile widening. “That’s the thing to remember, Ersa. People like you, and me, people who are so gray, and dark… We are at our best when we’re near people who shine.”

_“Stars are always bright, Ersa,” Fima says. “Especially in the dark, surrounded by so much black. That’s how we see them best.”_

Ersa has cried so much in the past week, and she does not fight the tears again now. Her father smiles at her, and squeezes her hand.

“But when we can’t be with them,” he says. “We have to figure out how to find our own light. We have to remember we still have it, even when all we see is gray.” He shrugs.

“You don’t shine, Ersa. Not like how your mother, or Fima, do. But you glow.”

“I glow best around Mama and Fima,” Ersa surmises, and he nods, and she adds, “I glow best around you too, Papa.”

When he smiles at her, she thinks he is just as bright as the moon.

Some things can only shine in darkness.

 

* * *

 

“I’m thinking about giving him my name. The galaxy could use another Erso.”

Ersa’s father stares. _“What?”_

“Wait, who are you talking about, again?” Fima wonders, pausing over spreading his toast with Roseberry jam.

“Spice,” Ersa’s mother says, and Ersa laughs, nearly inhaling milk up her nose.

“Is he still going by that name? Nyota picked it because she couldn’t think of anything else--”

“He seems to like it,” Ersa’s mother says, eyeing the rest of her family, all of whom are staring at her with expressions ranging from bewilderment, to confusion, to amusement.

Her father sighs. “Jyn, you can’t let a child have a name that’s slang for a _drug--”_

“I met a bounty hunter called Lithium in the Ring of Kafrene,” Fima interjects.

Ersa snorts. “Yeah, because they were using their real name--”

Her father stares at his son. “Fima, when were you in the Ring of Kafrene--”

“Spice Erso,” Ersa’s mother says, trying the name out, smiling. “I like it. Very unusual.”

“I _said_ Fima should have your surname,” Ersa’s father points out.

“And I ignored you, Cassian. And I was right, because what would we have named Ersa?”

“Ersa Erso,” Ersa tries, and Fima smirks. “Or Andora Erso?” she tries, and he rolls his eyes.

Her mother smiles. “Look, the boy doesn’t have any identification, doesn’t know his birth date, doesn’t remember his family. He’s all alone. Nyota gave him the first name he ever had. And before Ersa, he didn’t even know people could be _kind._ Because my daughter is generous, and compassionate. So I might be giving him my surname, but only because it’s the closest to _Ersa.”_

This gets everyone in the kitchen to shut up.

Her mother goes to Ersa’s side, leaning down to press a kiss to her head.

“My best girl,” she murmurs, and Ersa bites her lip, and nods.

 

* * *

 

“You think they’re bad now, but when I turned up in the middle of the night, totally unexpected, covered in grime and salt from Crait, they lost their shit.”

Ersa laughs, and takes another sip of her Festian hot chocolate. Fima grins.

“I have no idea what they even do without us. Sit around and stare at each other, mostly. They’re disasters. People on base keep asking about them, and I’m like, _Every now and then, Cassian Andor tries and fails at pottery,_ and, _For my fourth birthday, Jyn Erso tried to bake a cake and nearly burned the house down.”_

Ersa laughs more, and Fima’s grin widens.

“Disasters,” he repeats.

“They try,” Ersa says.

“Oh, I know. They’re war heroes. Just retired ones.”

“The best kind.”

Fima looks at her, but Ersa doesn’t take the words back.

They’re seated in the front room, the curtains open to look outside. The night sky is dark, and cloudy, and the stars are all but invisible. Yet above, if she squints, Ersa thinks she can see a sliver of the moon.

“General Organa is searching out future aid,” Fima says. “Looking for new leaders, recruits. Poe’s with her, of course. Rey, too, maybe. But she might have her own thing, I don’t know. Kaydel’s home for a bit, like me. The point is… The Resistance isn’t dead. It’ll come back. It always does.”

Rebels never truly die.

(And that does include Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso.)

“Leia’s gonna call, one day,” Fima says. “And ask if we want to go back. And I’m in. But, Ersa… You don’t have to go. I know you know that, but; look, I treat you only as my kid sister, and not as a soldier, and if you were to go back… Okay, the point is, I’m trying to be better.”

Ersa is, too.

She’s seeing a psychiatrist every other day. She is working on getting her medications figured out, and working on expressing her emotions in a less self-destructive way. The bandages on her face have been removed. She has five long, ragged scars running across the left side of her face, one pulling at her lip, one curved towards her chin, one carving out the thin skin on her nose, one brushing her eye, one cresting at her forehead.

Sight out of her left eye is still blurry. They don’t know yet if it will ever make a full recovery.

Ersa is learning to not worry about that. It is not a thing she can control, and she’s trying to let go of that, to not hold it close, and turn her fear and grief into anger and recklessness.

“I know, Fima,” Ersa says. “But I like being your sister.”

Fima’s face softens, almost crumpling with relief, and he nods. “Good. I like being your brother.”

“I know,” Ersa says, again. She knows. “And I… I think I will go back. Eventually.”

Once she has herself together again. Once she can ask Nyota what she’s thinking about doing. Once she remembers why Fima fights, and why his reasons are solid, and thoughtful. Once she decides what she wants to fight for.

“I think I have time,” Ersa says.

Fima smiles. “As much as you need.”

The house is quiet.

Ersa looks at her brother. “Thank you, Fima.”

“Huh? For what?”

This one time, Fima did not respond to her calls.

But Ersa has never once responded to his.

And Fima had a very good reason for failing to contact her--namely, the loss of the entire Resistance fleet, the death of Luke Skywalker, the rise of Kylo Ren and the First Order--and she knew he would.

Because she knows her brother.

She knows how he has doted on her, has fought to keep her safe.

She knows he was the first to want her, to ask for a sibling.

She knows he is her first friend.

She knows that even when she fears she has no one, she will always have him in her corner.

“Everything,” she manages, because she thinks this is easier to say.

Fima nods, his brown eyes warm in a way hers are learning to be, from the person she has always aspired to be.

Ersa does not know what the future holds.

All she knows is she has her parents, always.

And her brother, for even longer.

And that is enough.

 

* * *

__

_ It is easy to prove, from the doctrine of gravitation,  _

_ that two  _ _ stars may be so connected together as to perform circles, or  _

_ similar ellipses, round their common centre of gravity.  _

_ In this  _ _ case, they will always move in directions opposite and parallel  _

_ to each other ; and their system, if not destroyed by some foreign  _

_ cause, will remain permanent. _

\--William Herschel, on binary star systems.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ending quote from "Catalogue of 500 New Nebulae, Nebulous Stars, Planetary Nebulae, and Clusters of Stars; With Remarks on the Construction of the Heavens", published 1786. [No, YOU read 18th century documents looking for info on the discovery of binary star systems.]
> 
> Chapter titles taken from "Tragedy: A Curious Art Form" by Anne Carson. I'm obsessed with it. These four lines from it fit this family throughout the Nonsense: "Why does tragedy exist?" (Cassian) "Because you are full of rage." (Jyn) "Why are you full of rage?" (Fima) "Because you are full of grief." (Ersa).
> 
> Kaddak and the Silver are current EU canon. The Black Sun is both current and old EU canon. The man with the blade hand is an OC, as is "Spice Erso."
> 
> The "There are things you must remember" motif is from SAIL TO THE MOON, while the "I hope one day you will forgive me" is from multiple stories in the Nonsense.
> 
> I know this chapter focused a lot on memories of past events, but Ersa is a lot like Cassian, who did much of the same in the Nonsense. Unlike Jyn, and now Fima, who only briefly linger in the past. The Nonsense saw Cassian's journey to understanding his life-long depression, culminating in UNCURLING LIFELINES. It is Ersa's turn, now. And she's got a big, strong, support system. And she's young. She's still got time.
> 
> [A lot of you picked up on Ersa's anger being reminiscent of Jyn, but it is also similar to Serafima's years as a criminal, and this also checks out. Jyn and Serafima have a lot in common.]
> 
> [also, a Thing that occurred to me: had Cassian been killed on Hosnian Prime with the New Republic, then Jeseej's prediction from all the way back in GRAY AREAS ("You will be killed by a moon") would actually have come true in this universe. good thing I did not think of this until now.]
> 
> I do not know what the future holds for Fima and Ersa, as I do not know what the future holds for the rest of the STAR WARS gang. 
> 
> But I think this story ends happily, or at least, hopefully: they're together again. I didn't intend this, but I think this story ends like TLJ does: with our heroes failing (spectacularly; Ersa did not recover the datapad filled with info about the trafficked children, and instead got her face sliced up) and learning from that, and learning to come back from that. And learning the significance of perseverance, of trying again, when you've recovered. And the importance of being visible to people who need a hero (see: "Spice").
> 
> There's understanding, of what's happened, and forgiveness. There's even a hint of optimism, for the first time. And I think that's the thing that happens, when you recover from your grief, and decide to move on.
> 
> I also am taking that as a sign that I am ready to end the Nonsense, and move on to my original projects. It has been very strange, and very fun, and weirdly cathartic.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and commenting, if you did. I'm around here, and also on [tumblr](http://www.theputterer.tumblr.com)


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